


all my demons have your smile

by moonseul



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Psycho-Pass Fusion, Cyberpunk, Detectives, Domesticity in Dystopia, Enemies to Lovers, Feelings Realization, Friends to Enemies, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Misunderstandings, Reconciliation, Sybil System (Psycho-Pass), mentions of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28874982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonseul/pseuds/moonseul
Summary: Under the prismatic layers of light Jaemin can clearly see the small mole under his right eye, his skin a brilliant, rose pink. Jaemin catches the faint scent of his cologne, the same one he’d been wearing since forever. He’s so close that he can feel his own heartbeat pulse, a ticking time bomb closing in on him, an aperture winding down so that all he can see, all he can smell, is Jeno.What Jaemin does next is normal. He panics.Jaemin learns three things when he gets a call on a fateful Sunday night: One, he has been summoned back to the Crime Investigation Department; Two, Jeno is alive; and Three, Jeno is alive as anenforcer.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 58
Kudos: 175





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i am back with a psycho pass au! my all time favorite anime (´｡• ᵕ •｡`)
> 
> **Premise:** In a futuristic world, a powerful bio-mechanical computer network called the Sibyl System is able to measure the biometrics of citizens' brains to reveal their Psycho-Pass and a numeric Crime Coefficient, which reveals one's criminality potential. When one's Crime Coefficient exceeds the accepted threshold, they are apprehended by field officers of the Ministry of Welfare Public Safety Bureau. These field officers are the Inspectors and Enforcers. ([more details here](https://evan-soohoo.medium.com/psycho-pass-the-best-thing-ever-742520ba32f5))
> 
> content warnings: mentions of injury, brief descriptions of blood and violence

_“Frail is our vessel, and the ocean is wide.”_

_St. Augustine_

Two weeks before his graduation at Seoul National University, Sungchan gets pulled out for an early placement at the Ministry of Welfare Public Safety Bureau. It’s been all he’s ever dreamt of since he was a boy — one day he’d join the ranks his father used to walk as an Inspector in the force. 

It’s been fifteen years since he lost him. 

Fifteen years does a lot to memory, and he figured that this would be the way to best remember him.

He takes a deep breath to soothe his jittery nerves, where occasionally a shiver would rush under the sleeves of his black suit. He’s hyperaware: the rasping sounds of his wool overcoat against his cotton shirt when he shifts in his seat; the humming of the air conditioning, billowing through the vents; the man sitting in the seat next to him, tapping the tip of his pen on the steel finish of the conference room table.

“Your first day too?” Sungchan tries to break the ice, glancing across at him.

He looks a little older than Sungchan is. His coal-colored hair is brushed upwards and over like a wave, smooth like the press of his suit. He’s prim. Proper. Down to the shine of his cap toe oxfords. He looks like he’s got it all together, but the sunken look in his eyes tells Sungchan he’s lived through something like this before.

“You could say so,” he replies, meeting his gaze. It feels like he’s got something to say, but then the moment passes and he’s already looking away.

* * *

_Na Jaemin_. Sungchan learns his name when the chief comes into the room to brief them on their posting to Division Three of the Crime Investigation Department. She’s a tall, slender woman, maybe in her fifties, with steely gray eyes and a characteristic pair of jade earrings. 

Sungchan also learns that Jaemin is a returning inspector, having been out of service for the past year due to an injury sustained in his last case. 

“We would’ve liked for you to continue your recuperation, Inspector Na,” she says, flicking through pages in her binder. It doesn’t look like she’s reading any of the pages, not with the way her eyes remain unfocused on the words. “But the recent developments with Division Two required urgent support with manpower.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Jaemin says cooly.

“I’m sure this all remains familiar to you,” she says to Jaemin, who nods once.

He stands, a hand clapping the back of Sungchan’s shoulder. “I’ll take our new recruit here on a tour.”

* * *

Located in the heart of Gangnam, the MWPSB tower stands at thirty-seven storeys tall. There’s too much to see all at once, even if Sungchan wants to, but time is of the essence — that’s what got him here early anyway. It doesn’t feel real yet, walking through the halls. The weight of his ID in his breast pocket feels paper light, like it’s yet to come into tangible existence.

Jaemin takes him first to the Crime Investigation Department, located on floors ten to thirteen. 

“Our intelligence analysts operate out of the tenth floor,” Jaemin says pointing at the elevator buttons, an alternative to actually bringing him on a full tour around the compound. 

“Forensics and the labs are on the eleventh, and twelve and thirteen are where our offices are located. For Division Three, we will be on thirteen,” he finishes, punctuating the end of his sentence with the _beep_ of the elevator button. 

Sungchan waits out the rest of the ride in silence, wondering if there’s something he should say. They’re going to be partners after all, and he wants to make sure he doesn’t get off on the wrong foot. As much as Sungchan thinks Jaemin comes off as distant and uninterested, he manages to do something small to subvert his expectations: he holds the elevator button open for Sungchan to exit first, he catches Sungchan by his arm when he almost slips on one of the winding glass steps.

“That used to get me too,” Jaemin chuckles.

Sungchan straightens. Thanks Jaemin for the help. He sucks in a deep breath.

“Just wondering, since you’ve done this before… Any advice for a rookie?” Sungchan asks.

Jaemin hums, tutting his lips as he thinks. His hands find their way to his pockets. “Well, guess I’ll put it this way. The people you’ll be meeting in a little bit — don’t think they’re humans like us.”

“The enforcers?” Sungchan knows as much, having studied the bureau’s organizational structure in school.

“Yes, their psycho passes have exceeded the regulation value and they are hence considered latent criminals. Normally, they’d be put in isolation, but a select few are chosen to be enforcers, if they have the aptitude for it. Their sole purpose is to flush out criminals, just like themselves.”

They arrive in front of the metal doors to the Division Three office. 

“We, as inspectors, serve a different purpose,” Jaemin finishes, his visage shifting into something unreadable. “A word of advice? Draw a line between yourself and them.”

* * *

  
  


Jaemin had received the call on a Sunday evening. It came directly from the Chief’s office, but when he picked up the phone it was her deputy on the line. _Funny of them to call me only when they need me_ , he thought bitterly, after almost a year of radio silence.

He’d considered a few options after his discharge from the hospital. Two, close to three, months of just lying in a bed does things to you. Learning to walk again after three months of barely any movement was a pain in the ass. So much that he considered a life outside of being an Inspector. A photojournalist, perhaps. He’d always been great at taking pictures where they mattered. Or maybe a teacher, like his mother was.

Static rasped on the other end of the line. “Inspector Na?” the male voice said.

_Inspector Na_ , Jaemin repeated internally. There’d only ever been one option. To think there was anywhere else he could go was foolish.

“Yes, speaking,” he replied. He listened intently. 

There’d been an explosive on a case assigned to Division Two. Its two Inspectors, unfortunately, wiped out. Division Three’s Inspectors were bumped up, so: “We’d like to have you back in the CID.”

Jaemin nodded, even though the deputy wouldn’t be able to see. He stood up from his chair and rounded around his study, switching off his room holo with the flick of his wrist.

“When do I start?” 

The deputy cleared his throat. “Tomorrow.”

Jaemin focused his eyes on the magenta black sky, the field of blinking lights in a city that never sleeps.

“And Inspector Na, now that you are back on the force, I am pleased to be able to disclose the information you requested about your former partner.”

The city lights in the horizon blurred, stars collapsing into one.

“Jeno?” It came out soft as a whisper, partially in disbelief, because it’s been _so long_ — months, no, a whole damn year chasing after a ghost. He’d woken up without a sight of him, not at his bedside, not anywhere else. Inquiries to the ministry went unanswered due to confidentiality. He paid Jeno’s mother a visit as soon as he was discharged and had the door promptly slammed in his face.

_He became a latent criminal, did you hear?_

“He’s now an Enforcer in Division Three,” the deputy said. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jaemin hung up soon after that. He retreated back to his bedroom, flopped onto his bed, and took a whole ten minutes to process this.

“So he’s alive,” he said to himself, eyes trained on the ceiling’s vague concavities. The deep orange light from the vintage suspensor lamps casted a slow-moving spot across the walls.

He had imagined what this revelation would feel like. Not just once, but multiple times with increasing frequency as time grew. And as the months passed without a single word, he faced the possibilities that one, Jeno was dead, or that two, he really turned into a latent criminal, which was just as good as being dead.

So Jaemin mourned.

Ten years of friendship, whittled down to a small box of belongings, which he finally stowed away in the storage cabinet when he found his peace. 

Or so he thought.

_So he’s alive_ , Jaemin ran the idea through one more time, letting out a shallow exhale. _As an Enforcer_.

* * *

Jeno’s there, sitting by the window. Jaemin knows by the sound of his lilting laugh, coming past him plucking its thin, blue notes. It’s him, in the flesh. 

Sunlight touches him and the sharp line of his jaw, cuts him by the corner of his eye. His hair is now blue-black, violent like a bruise. He’s still got that button nose, a hint of the boy Jaemin once knew, but his shoulders have filled out now, broad and cut and straining against his suit jacket.

He’s nothing at all like how Jaemin remembers him. He looks at him and feels none of the fondness, none of the longing he’d felt over the past year. Only the tender burn of betrayal, ripe as a fresh wound.

* * *

“They’re the Enforcers?” Sungchan asks, stepping in.

He takes a quick scan of the room. Specifically, at the four men sitting at their desks. At the sound of him and Jaemin entering the room, their heads whip around. They stand to greet them.

The first one introduces himself as Ten. He’s half a head shorter than him, his black hair long and ending a little under his ears. Through his white dress shirt — his very thin dress shirt — Sungchan can make out the faint shadows of tattoos. A big, stark one definitely in the middle of his chest. A tattoo sleeve, for sure, running down his right arm and peeking out from under his rolled sleeves.

If Ten’s got a dancer’s body, lean and lithe, then the man standing next to him is his total opposite. He’s about as tall as Sungchan is but his shoulders are probably twice as wide. Sungchan doesn’t need to see his muscles to know how strong he is. His hair dyed a dirty blonde. He grins a goofy smile and says his name is Johnny.

For a moment, Sungchan begins to have second thoughts. _Don’t think they’re humans like us._ Jaemin’s words resound in his mind again. Despite his height, Ten and Johnny could probably overwhelm him, and come to think of it, this is the first time in his life he’s ever been in the same room with a latent criminal.

To his relief, the other two Enforcers seem friendlier.

Chenle is the third one’s name. He’s short, kind of looks like he’s a minor, and genuinely doesn’t seem to look the part. Later, Sungchan would reminisce in retrospect, how foolish it was to underestimate him.

He greets Jaemin with a wave. Sungchan glances over at Jaemin curiously. They must know each other before.

Briefly, he wonders if Jaemin’s always been so serious. And not because he’s scowling, no, not that at all. His face is completely flat. Maybe to him this is another day, another job.

But Sungchan notices now, just as the last one begins to introduce himself, how Jaemin’s eyebrows furrow. He looks like he’s thinking, and he doesn’t look like he’s thinking about anything good.

When the man is done, he turns to Jaemin, voice tentative. A toe in the water. “ _Jaem_.”

“Jaemin,” he cuts it off, voice steely. His body is as still as a statue, and Sungchan, standing right next to them, feels like an intruder.

Light from the room shifts, as if a fog has all of a sudden cloaked Gangnam-gu. A tilt in the earth’s axis. Sungchan catches the light disappearing from Jeno’s eyes as it turns glassy.

“Jaemin,” he repeats to correct himself.

* * *

Post-lunch, after a busy morning learning to file basic reports and bibimbap at his desk, Sungchan finds his first opportunity to slip away when Chenle’s about to head down to the labs.

“I’ll come with!” He shouts, almost too enthusiastically, it raises some eyebrows. “It’ll be good to know where that’s located,” he explains himself.

He falls into step next to Chenle. He’s short, and he takes his time, so Sungchan adjusts accordingly.

“So. Busy morning huh?” He says idly.

Chenle scoffs, glancing up at him, “Oh, you haven’t seen busy. Just you wait.” 

They’re waiting outside the labs for the results of a forensic sample. _It’s taking a bit longer than expected_ , the technician had popped out of the room to say, so Sungchan thinks of a better alternative than twiddling his thumbs:

“You knew Jaemin from before?” He asks. 

Chenle nods.

Briefly, Sungchan wonders what Jaemin was like. It’s almost unimaginable — Jaemin on his first day, Jaemin learning to do this, do that. His confidence and the way he handles himself today makes it seem like eons ago. 

“Was he always this…” Sungchan trails off, trying to find the words. “Serious?”

Chenle mulls over it, scratching the back of his neck. “I was always in Division Three and Jaemin, at the time, worked in Division Two. I heard he was in the running to get promoted to Division One, so he must have been pretty good at his job.”

“I see,” Sungchan says. It makes sense. Someone as proficient at the job as him would definitely be considered for top rung.

He thinks back to the tension he felt earlier in the morning.

“And Jeno — he was an enforcer in Division Two as well?” 

Chenle shakes his head, stuffs his hands in his pockets. He sighs, voice regretful, “Jeno and Jaemin? They were best friends.” 

His lips purse to the side, knowing he’s said too much. 

“Jeno… he used to be an Inspector too.”

* * *

Jeno’s in the sparring room in the middle of a workout when Chenle finds him. He doesn’t know when Chenle had slipped in, and how long he’d been standing by the door watching.

The spar bot makes a quick right uppercut, and Jeno manages to dodge it by an inch. With the same momentum, he spins into a high kick at the bot’s ribs. When it skirts on the floor, Jeno finds the opportunity to turn off the simulation.

“What is it?” He asks Chenle.

Chenle’s got a bag of takeout — Jeno’s not sure where from — and he shakes the bag in front of Jeno like he’s beckoning him over with a treat. Not to say it doesn’t work, since Jeno’s already walking. 

“Where’d you get that from?” He asks again. Takeout is hard to get at night, especially when there’s no one left in the building to pick it up. Sometimes he forgets — it was only a year ago that he’d returned as an Enforcer. A new life, with new rules.

Becoming an Enforcer was no different from being in isolation, in the broader sense of things. Without an Inspector around, it was impossible to leave the confines of the MWPSB residence.

“Sungchan got it for me,” Chenle sing-songs, smiling smugly. “I got your favorite. You looked like you needed it.”

“Tch,” Jeno sneers. He flicks the sweat out of his bangs, rubs his dirty hand on the hem of his shirt. “I’m fine.”

“Uh, ya,” Chenle cocks his head at the spar bot on the ground, its limbs tossed in a heap. “ _Not fine_.”

They find a spot to sit in the break room next to the gym. Chenle plops the takeout bag on the table and unearths a bowl of jjampong for Jeno.

“You shouldn’t bully Sungchan like this,” Jeno scolds mildly, but takes the bowl out of Chenle’s hands anyway. Morals are morals, but Jeno can close an eye if jjampong’s on the line. Who’s he to boast about morals anyway?

“I didn’t bully him, god. Have a little faith in me, will you?” Chenle says. He picks up his chopsticks and snaps them in half. “I may be a little demon but I’m not _that_ bad. Come on. He was practically offering to be my friend.”

Jeno sinks his chopsticks into his noodles, stirring the soup to fish out the squid chunks. He devours those first. “Yeah,” he says, mouth full. “I’m sure he’s totally here to be friends. Since when have Inspectors tried to be our friends.”

Chenle shrugs. “You never know.”

“At least we’ve got one nice one,” Jeno tries to joke, but it leaves his mouth with a bitter taste. He looks down at his soup, just to make sure, but it’s just jjampong. It is what it is. No matter what Jeno did to distract himself he always came back to the same thought.

“I thought he’d react differently when he saw me,” he admits. He presses his lips into a thin line, feeling the weight of Chenle’s gaze on him. 

After his psycho pass worsened past regulation level, the ministry immediately took him off the force and sent him into isolation. He wasn’t even given notice — not to go home to get his things or time to tell his mother. Three months then, in the isolation facility, where even after bouts of mental therapy his psycho pass showed no signs of improving.

_There are just some things you can’t unsee_ , he’d told Chenle once when they were on the rooftop. _There are things you can’t undo, and it becomes part of you._..

Even after isolation, his contact with the outside world was limited. Nothing from a latent criminal travels out to their family and friends. At times he worried that his friends and family would forget about him and his existence, but then again, maybe it was better that they did. 

Still — it hurt. Especially if it came from _him._

“He knows why you’re here, doesn’t he?” Chenle asks, setting his utensils down. He looks at him straight, because he means it. 

Jeno shakes his head.

“Nope,” Jeno replies. Idly, he stirs the remainder of his noodles, watching them swirl in the container. 

“You gonna tell him?”

_Tell him what?_ Jeno thought, wryly. There was a whole list of things to say, some of them recent —the things he’d thought about in isolation, stupid things that he wished he could just turn to Jaemin to say. Other things he’d known for quite some time now, if only he had the balls then to admit it. He straightens in his seat, shaking the delusion out of his head.

“He doesn’t need to know.”

* * *

  
  


Slowly, Sungchan thinks he’s getting a hand of things. He’s got the post mortem reports settled, and he knows where everything is located now, down to the hidden stash of good coffee Jaemin’s let him in on. 

Jaemin teaches patiently, hovering by Sungchan’s shoulder whenever he’s doing something for the first time. He teaches him shortcuts on Excel, which is pretty neat, but as soon as he leaves Sungchan secretly reaches for his mouse. 

Everything feels like it’s under control — that is, until an alarm blares through the system overhead.

Jaemin sinks into his chair, lolls his head back onto the headrest, and lets out a sigh loud enough that Sungchan can hear it over the bells.

“What, what’s going on?” He asks, rising from his chair.

Chenle comes bounding by his desk, tapping him by the arm. “You wanted to see what a busy day was like, well, now you got one.”

* * *

  
  


Jaemin briefs him in the car while they’re on the highway.

“This is our target,” he says, reading off the holo projected in front of the dashboard. “Male, late thirties. A street scanner flagged him during a hue check, but when a security drone ordered him to receive therapy, he refused treatment and ran.”

Sungchan studies the profile.

_PSYCHO PASS — FOREST GREEN — 127_

“That’s the last of what the street scanners picked up. Here’s his escape route,” Jaemin continues, flicking through the pages with a voice command. He keeps his hands on the wheel even though the car’s on autopilot. “Unfortunately for us, he’s escaped into Dongdaemun.”

“The abolition block?”

“Yeah,” Jaemin huffs. “It’s going to be a bitch to suss him out.”

Sungchan diverts his attention back to the map and the small blinking dot of the target’s last known location. It’s been years since he’s last stepped into Dongdaemun, though he doubts it will be any different. For decades now Dongdaemun has gone without repair. Its narrow alleys and patchy electricity have made it impossible to connect the area to the grid. Consequently, the area was left to flounder while the rest of Seoul thrived under the new era of Sibyl.

An abolition block is what it’s called now. Hot pockets of controlled crime, a small ecosystem left to fester in the underbelly of the new civilization.

“We’ll have to be careful not to raise the area stress level further. Especially when it’s that crowded,” Sungchan comments, recalling the bits and pieces he remembered from training.

“Exactly. We’ll corner him, then take him out where no one can see,” Jaemin says.

Sungchan sinks in his seat slightly. “To think he let his hue get clouded to this point…” he utters.

Jaemin tightens his grip around the wheel, guiding the vehicle into a slight right turn on the highway.

“In any case, he’s a latent criminal. He’s so far gone that we don’t need to wait for Sibyl’s judgement.”

  
  


* * *

They arrive at the foot of Dongdaemun’s door. The prisoner transport vehicle trails behind them, its red siren blending in with the haphazardly bright signboards. A crowd begins to gather behind the security drones that have cordoned off the area, and they fall silent at the _woosh_ of the truck doors opening.

Out step the Enforcers.

A unit from the truck dislodges and carts itself towards them. It opens like a shell at the scan of Jaemin’s palm, revealing a set of Dominators, still glowing a dim blue.

It’s surreal, seeing one up close. Feels like he’s not in his body, once he wraps his fingers around the grip. 

_Dominator Portable Psychological Diagnosis and Suppression System has been activated._

_User Authentication: Inspector Jung Sungchan_

_Affiliation: Public Safety Bureau, Crime Investigation Department_

_Dominator usage approval confirmed._

He hears the voice in his ears and the interface meld with his vision. Turning the dominator over in his hand, he registers its weight. 

A gun that reads the psycho pass of anyone it’s pointed at. He’s got the judgement of Sibyl in his hand.

“I’ll take Johnny and Chenle,” Jaemin says, ambling towards him.

Sungchan looks up from his gun and sweeps his gaze around for the enforcers. They’re by the other case of dominators, hints of blue flickering in their eyes.

“We’ll split and search. If you locate the target you sound through the comms and we’ll corner him at the rendezvous point. Understood?” Jaemin says. He gives a curt motion, waving his hand to beckon Johnny and Chenle away.

“Relax,” a strong hand claps his back. He turns and finds Jeno. “Follow our lead.”

* * *

Even outside the monsoon months, the inner walls of Dongdaemun market are damp to the touch. They start in Dongdaemun market, winding through the wholesale wet market, past the sordid stench of seafood, cinnamon sharp scent of dried herbs and cuttlefish, through a curtain of garlands, hanging from a souvenir store.

There are too many people in the vicinity to hold his dominator in plain sight — the appearance of the gun alone will send the area stress level into alarm — so Sungchan keeps it in its holster under his coat.

“He’s not here,” Jeno says.

“How do you know?”

Ten turns around, smirks. “A man on the run is anything but calm. If he were out in the open, we’d know by now.”

They slip behind into the narrow alleys behind the complex, where it takes an extra ounce of Sungchan’s attention to side step puddles and random mounds of garbage, from exposed and rusted pipes to an overturned couch, its cushions likely infested with something Sungchan doesn’t even want to think about.

“I heard the rumors about you,” Jeno comments offhand, when they’re climbing up a flight of stairs. He seems to have registered Sungchan’s silence, so he course-corrects: “They were good rumors, don’t worry.”

Pit pats of water drop onto Sungchan’s nylon coat from above. He watches Jeno climb the steps, one by one. He can barely make out the blue tips of his hair in the yellow and red lights. All it looked like from here was a shock of black. In all other circumstances, he would’ve thought Jeno was, among the Enforcers, the most normal of the bunch.

Gingerly, Sungchan raises his Dominator, pointing it at Jeno’s back.

_Crime coefficient is over 120._

_An enforcer registered at the Crime Investigation Department._

_He’s an enforce at will target._

_The safety will be released._

“Heard you were at the top of your class, and you could have picked any department to go to, but you chose to come here,” Jeno continues with his pace forward. Then, he pauses. Sungchan pulls his Dominator back. 

“Friendly piece of advice? You might as well forget everything you learnt. That’s all they teach you in school — logic.”

Jeno sweeps his gaze upwards, at the dirty glitz and glamor, circle of street signs that wrapped around them like a hurricane. And there they stood, in the eye of the storm.

“We live in a time where everything in a person’s mind — what they think, what they wish to do — everything is made transparent by machines. And yet, logically, or illogically, people still lie, cheat, steal, kill. All sorts of things.”

They emerge at the top of the flight of stairs. Sungchan looks away, down into the throngs and masses. They move slowly and surely, a whole city running on clockwork.

“ _Come in_ ,” a voice comes in through the comms. It’s rasped, coming out as a soft whisper. It’s Chenle. “Hound 3. I’ve located the target on the second floor near Textiles. Looks like he’s got a hostage. Permission to engage.”

“Shepherd 1,” Jaemin’s voice comes through, interspersed with the sound of him panting. “We are converging. Hold until we arrive.”

“If I wait any longer, I’m afraid this hostage will be at the end of her rope,” Chenle says.

“Fine,” Jaemin huffs. “Proceed with caution.”

The line goes static after, and then Sungchan is running too, chasing Jeno and Ten at their tails.

* * *

As much as he’d like to deny it, Jaemin can’t help but miss this feeling. His breath is choppy and shallow, his heart’s in his throat, but without a doubt he feels _alive_. Twelve months without actively training — god, does he hate running — but his feet pound the pavement, solid and hearty footfalls. At this point it’s pure muscle memory. He may have considered life as something else — a photographer, a journalist, any other cushy desk job — but when it comes down to it, nothing sends adrenaline pumping through his veins like this.

It makes him feel _something_.

Obviously, his hue took a tanking — he’d seen his share of dismembered bodies and read through enough trauma reports for his liking, but honestly, after you’ve seen it once… He’s numb to the violence now. If anything, he’s always got stress therapy and eustress vitamins to fall back on.

Last he checked, his crime coefficient hovered at a cerulean blue of 60. Good for now.

“Here, the textiles section is around the corner,” Johnny shouted up ahead, his silhouette a dark mark against the golden backdrop of the evening.

His comms crackled to life again, a low grunt: “Shit.”

“Shepherd 1. What’s wrong?”

There’s a piercing sound of glass shattering in his vicinity, and when he rounds the corner he sees Chenle squatting by one of the storerooms, Dominator loose in his grip.

“The paralyzer mode didn’t work,” he says.

“He must’ve been on some stimulant of sorts. Interferes with the activated pathway. Where’d he go?” Johnny asks, running into the room. There are used needles strewn across the table and a bunch of crumpled napkins. It only further confirms his hypothesis.

Jaemin follows Johnny into the room, eyeing the giant hole in the window. “Looks like he made a run for it.” He leans against the edge and looks out, eyes following the blood stained footprints down the alley. “Hurry, he must not have gotten far.”

“It looks like he’s heading towards the river,” Chenle deduces from the trail. “Shit, everyone’s gonna see.”

He quickly patches a line to Shepherd 2.

“He’s headed to the waterway. Hound 1, Hound 4, corner him into an alley before he makes it into the open. Shepherd 2, send the security drones around the perimeter, now.”

* * *

Down on the main street, the target’s left an unsightly mess in his wake. Based on the remote readings on his watch holo the area stress level’s almost doubled, and that’s just from whatever’s in his perimeter. If only the drones were here.

“Johnny, Chenle, we’ll need to secure the perimeter. Can’t let this get any bigger than it already is. Scan the crowd for any raised crime coefficients. If they refuse treatment, paralyze them.”

“You won’t need back up?” Johnny confirms.

“We’ve got the other team. I can handle it,” Jaemin assures. 

And then he’s running again, chasing after the blood trail. The shrieking in the distance also gives a good indication of the target’s and his hostage’s approximate location. He ducks in and out of open spaces in the crowd, pushing past high schoolers and elderly storekeepers alike.

“Hound 4.”

Jaemin knows it’s Jeno on the line, and that he’s addressing the whole team, so he does his best to ignore the way his voice sounds, whispered into his ear.

“We’re closing in on him, down behind the grocer’s on the next avenue.”

“Got it, turning in,” he hisses between breaths. Out in the open, his breath leaves his mouth in wisps, milky in the dimming light. 

“Freeze!” Ten shouts, holding up his dominator to point at the wavering figure in the distance. He’s too far to get in a good shot, so they’ll have to go closer. Jaemin finds them by the alley and sees that Jeno and Ten are already approaching.

He gives a reassuring pat on Sungchan’s shoulder. “Time to close this case.”

The man is quivering in his dirty wife beater, where down the front of it there is a growing wound, the size of a fist, angry and blooming in the heat of the fight. He’s got a manic look in his eyes, cut by the glare in the reflection of his blue tinted eyeglasses. He holds a switchblade to the young woman’s throat. Her hair, matted with dried blood, is plastered to her chest. She tries to make a sound but nothing leaves her throat at all. 

“Do not move,” Ten says calmly, sinking into a sullen tone. The first Jaemin’s ever heard of it. “Do not attempt to resist.”

“Stop right there or I’ll gut her!” The man shouts, pressing the blade to her throat. 

Jaemin’s looking at him through the viewfinder, awaiting Sibyl’s judgement.

He takes a step closer anyway, because he doesn’t need Sibyl to tell him how high the target’s crime coefficient is at this point, so he just wants to get closer for a better shot. This sets something off in the man. First thing he does is toss the blade right at him.

It happens so quickly, Jaemin doesn’t even have time to think _shit_ , and then Jeno’s tackled him out of the way and they’re both on the concrete. Jeno’s chest is pressed against his, hot and heavy. The lapels of his down coat hung over him, feathering his cheek with such lightness it started to hurt. It’s not the time nor place, and Jaemin hates himself for it, because instead of the hate he’d conditioned himself to feel, it was relief. Sweet relief that erupted something within him as soon as Jeno reached out to Jaemin’s shoulder to steady himself. 

Jeno hung above him, blotting out the moonlight. He is all shadow — far gone in the impenetrable darkness — but in his eyes there is a last glimmer of light. In Jeno’s eyes, Jaemin sees the reflection of himself.

“Get off me,” he spits, pushing the other off.

Ten rushes forward, catching aim. The Dominator charges up, glowing a brilliant blue, and Jaemin only registers its firing when the sound of the blast hits him. The man’s body begins to bubble like a contorted balloon, before it bursts into a ring of blood and body bits. 

“Shit,” Ten grunts.

Sungchan’s holding up his gun at the hostage, who’s crime coefficient has now gone over 300. His arms are shaking, index finger hovering over the trigger.

“She was innocent…” he stutters.

Jaemin’s holding up his Dominator as well, where in its viewfinder he sees her holding up a thick metal pipe, pointing its jagged edge at the group. 

“And yet Sibyl has judged her so,” Ten responds.

“She still has a chance,” Sungchan pleads. Then, directing his voice to the woman, he shouts, “Ma’am please — put the weapon down! You still have a chance at treatment, you still have a chance at life!”

Jaemin tracks the crime coefficient counter as it fluctuates from 320, to 308, to 315. _There’s no chance of recovery at this point_ , Jaemin thinks. _Even if she does calm down, and they safely paralyze her, what then? She’ll never have a place in society again. What life is there to live in isolation?_

Sungchan continues, his voice strained, “Put the weapon down!”

310… 305… 298…

Slowly, she lowers her arm. The pipe clatters to the ground.

“Inspector Jung, please aim carefully,” Jaemin says in a measured tone.

Sungchan steadies his shaking hands, points, then shoots.

* * *

“Well, that was a mess,” Jaemin remarks as he sinks back into his office chair, sensing terrible fatigue seeping into his muscles. His back is going to feel it tomorrow, he knows for sure. 

The enforcers have retired to their quarters for the rest of the evening, leaving just him and Sungchan alone in the office to face over thirty incident reports to review and approve before night’s end. The sight of the target and his hostage escaping in the public, covered in blood no less, had sent the stress levels of around thirty passersby to a dangerous level. Rounding them up was, thankfully, a much simpler task with Johnny and Chenle’s help.

Sungchan remains quiet by his laptop.

“You did well,” Jaemin acknowledges, looking over at him. The boy’s had a rough first week, and he looks like it. Sungchan nods, swallows. “Here, let’s split it. I’ll take fifteen, you take fifteen. We just have to check we’ve got all their details right and we’ll be good to go home before ten.”

Jaemin turns to his laptop, clicking through the auto-generated reports. This was probably the most mundane aspect of the job, but alas it has to be done.

_Click, click_.

“Hey,” Sungchan’s voice starts, unsure. It trails off just as Jaemin shifts to study him, waiting. It takes a moment for Sungchan to find the words. “You mentioned earlier, on my first day, that the Enforcers… they’re not like us.”

Jaemin nods slowly.

“I don’t know how to say this, I don’t know if I’m _allowed_ to say this but, from what I saw today, our Enforcers, these latent criminals — they seem just like us,” Sungchan begins to ramble, flustered. He looks like he’s been holding these thoughts in for a while, and it comes rushing out all at once.

Jaemin hears what Sungchan’s saying. He also hears the naivete. 

“What do you have against them?” Sungchan asks, curious. He watched Jaemin’s face closely.

“Isn’t that what they teach us in school? We all know it’s bad to become one. Just because our Enforcers have a little semblance of freedom, that doesn’t make them any different. You don’t know what they could be thinking, you don’t know what they could do. They don’t owe us anything — neither do we owe them.” 

Jaemin clears his throat at the end, when all of the sudden feels like it’s closed in on itself. And it’s almost as if he anticipated it, because Sungchan says:

“Jeno saved your life just now, you know that right?” 

_Of course I know_ , Jaemin thinks, his mind hardening. _I was there — I saw it, I felt it._ _I was a witness to my own downfall_. Even now, he remembered the intensity of Jeno’s gaze, how it cut him like how the moonlight slivered the side of Jeno’s exposed neck. He began to grow repulsed with himself.

“I said what I said,” Jaemin snarls, his hands tightening over the handles of his chair. He turns back to face the dizzying blue light of his screen.

“Whether or not you take my advice is up to you.”

  
  


* * *

In his dreams, sometimes Jaemin relives his trauma. The stabbing pain in his lower back, bodyweight pressing on the pressure point. In those dreams, he wakes, clamoring for the bottle of eustress vitamins he’d left by his bedside. 

Those dreams are bearable because he wakes up from it.

It’s the ones he doesn’t wake up from that kill him from the inside.

For so long he’d been trying to understand them: he’s standing at the mouth of a river, humid heat wrapped around him like a dark pelisse, the crashing of waves churning in his ears. And he’s shouting — so much his throat hurts, so much that he exhausts his own arms and chest.

The same dream, over and over again.

Shouting to what — he’d never been asleep long enough to see to the end of it. Not until tonight.

He’s there again at the crossing. At the very point where sea meets sand, and the water diverges and empties into a lake so wide it mirrors the ocean. Finally, he has come to a place larger than loss.

The moon peeks from underneath the cover of drifting clouds, lifting over the horizon. Its light exposes a small island across the water, revealing a lone figure. Jaemin could know that shape in his sleep.

He knows him by the shape of his angular jaw, his twinkling smile, and his crescent moon eyes.

He’s shouting across at the boy, but the water only seems to grow deeper; the island, farther. He is so far gone in the impenetrable darkness that it feels like Jaemin has to die in order to reach him.

And in this dream, Jaemin knows he would.

  
  


* * *

He awakes with a start, hands instinctively flying to his bedside table. He wraps his hands around the bottle, considering, though eventually replaces it back on the nightstand.

Flopping back onto his bed, he tries to return to sleep, but all he can see is Jeno. Jeno, immobilized as a cinematographic still, the projector of his memory clicking through every fraction of him with every flutter of his eyelid. 

Summer, 2045: They’re squatting outside the convenience store in middle school, sucking on popsicles.

Fall, 2047: Jeno looking back at him from his bicycle, his glasses falling off his nose and his mouth open in a laugh so wide he can almost hear it.

Spring, 2053: The day before the Sibyl exam, when all university students have their fates decided. They’re lying on their backs on their school rooftop like cuttlefish salting under the indifferent sun. Time then felt endless, and Jaemin would always remember how he looked at him.

_I’ll follow you anywhere you go_ , Jeno had promised. And Jaemin, like the fool he was, believed it.

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **author’s note:** the cases in this story were inspired by the actual cases in the first 1-5 episodes of the series (with tweaks on how it pans out). please don’t read into the chemistry of explosions too deeply lol. it’s been a hot sec since i took my last chemistry class. i also made up random names of suspects. hope you enjoy!
> 
> also, check out this [AMAZING playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LbuOlVsKmXPejj3ygN48x) put together by sarayu (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

_“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster._

_And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”_

_Friedrich Nietzsche_

Jaemin awakes gently into the dim light of the morning. For a moment he couldn’t recall who he was or where he was, but the familiar roughness of his comforter and weight of his body pillow brought him back to his apartment in Seoul.

He inches over to check the time on his phone. God, it’s so early, but he knows if he goes back to sleep for another hour he’d definitely be late to work, so he reluctantly kicks off his sheets and gets ready for the day.

First, he puts on a pot of coffee, preferring to do it by hand rather than instruct his household holo helper to do it. The ritual of tapping the coffee powder into the portafilter and screwing it into the holder brought him an inexplicable peace. The lovely, nutty scent wafts up to meet him. 

South Korea has adopted a policy of self-sufficiency ever since the collapse of the neo-liberal economy in the early 2010s. The population boom, coupled with the civil wars that had erupted worldwide, prompted the country into isolation by 2015. 

His mother had told him once of coffee beans grown outside the country — she even kept her last bag of imported Italian coffee, knowing it would be the last. Of course, the powder had long since gone bad, and Jaemin had been born into a society that knew nothing but _daehan minguk, manse_ , but to humor himself sometimes Jaemin liked to think about it.

He takes his cup of coffee to the window, pulling back the blinds. Outside, the city is stirring awake. He studies the brightening sky, which brought into greater clarity the detailed markings of the cityscape, like water brought to a parched mouth. Below him, life trickles into the nooks and crannies, people the size of little ants scuttling across the zebra crossings.

His peace only lasts him a moment. It lasts him till he takes the first sip of his coffee and realizes that he’d put in the wrong blend.

This was the coffee Jeno and him used to drink, only because the idiot loved to buy everything in bulk, and Jaemin would end up with five bags of powder, which was enough to last him a whole damn year.

He sets the mug down by his desk. Picks up his VR headset to get his mind off things.

“Where would you like to go today?” His holo asks, swooping in from above. Pixel by pixel, his furnishings are blotted out and replaced with the sleek design he’d picked out in the CommuField digital mall. At the time, he’d invested in an interior holo, knowing that it could last even if he moved places. There wasn’t much of a need then for a fancy, physical couch when he spent most of his time in the office.

“I’ll just browse around,” he says to his holo helper. 

Before he steps out of his CommuField, he stops to check his reflection in the mirror by the door. In this reality, his avatar is a cartoon samoyed, which was cute when he first got his ID at fifteen, but really… at twenty-five… _Whatever_ , he sighs, and enters the server.

He flicks through the thumbnails for different CommuFields. Lemonade Candy and ‘Abs in 2 weeks’? _Yeah right_. Next, a thumbnail of Talisman, who’s widely known in the community for helping to comfort others. Jaemin had always found that bizarre — Talisman’s avatar was that of a four-faced jester, dotted with four pairs of demonic red eyes, and Jaemin found that anything but comforting.

 _Yeah, no_ _thanks_. 

Jaemin scrolls a little down the leaderboard for the up and rising avatars, pausing when a picture of Ssambear comes up. The pink bear looks harmless, and Jaemin figures, why the heck not.

* * *

To his surprise, the four walls around him slide away, the sound of shuffling wooden boards grating his senses like sandpaper on his skin. _Clunk, clunk_ , and he’s sitting in front of Ssambear.

“Samoyed, welcome to my CommuField!” Ssambear greets, wavings its thick pink arms. 

“Ah,” Jaemin gasps, his mouth loosely open. “Hello. Sorry, I didn’t think I’d get to meet you today.” He rubs the back of his neck, at a loss of what to say next.

Thankfully, Ssambear isn’t able to see his face underneath his avatar. He didn’t actually think he’d get to meet Ssambear personally on the first try — it was typically a matter of luck and timing to meet a CommuField owner like this, especially if he arrived uninvited.

“Ohh, Samoyed, don’t feel shy! Whenever possible, I love to welcome new visitors to my CommuField. And I see it’s your first time visiting, so, tell me, what can I help you with today?” Ssambear leans to perch on the arm of its lounge chair.

Jaemin briefly considers force quitting. In his room, his palms are growing sweaty in his VR gloves, but he takes a deep breath and proceeds. It’s something he needs to get off his chest, and he’ll take the option of offloading it onto a random stranger than onto someone he actually knows. Who would he even tell this to in real life anyway? Not Sungchan, for sure. The poor boy’s only known him for a week and he’s probably still traumatized from the job. It would’ve been much easier if he actually kept in contact with his friends from high school. But there wasn’t time for self-pity now.

“I’ve been feeling very… confused lately,” he begins. The voice that comes out of his avatar is still his own, maybe a pitch or two higher, but he knows it’s him. 

Ssambear nods, prodding him along.

“There was someone I used to know. He disappeared for a long time, and I thought I came to terms with it, but he’s back in my life now and,” Jaemin pauses to take a breath. “It’s just not the same anymore. I can’t look at him and feel like everything’s gone back to normal.”

“And why is that?” Ssambear asks.

Jaemin would love to know why as well. He would love to be able to explain why in the presence of Jeno, his heart could feel both wringing pain and pulsating joy. 

“We made a promise to stick together, and he’s left me behind,” Jaemin murmurs. He looks beyond Ssambear, out to the wall behind it. Anything to avoid Ssambear’s eyes.

“So why don’t you chase him?” Ssambear asks, innocently. 

And of course, Jaemin can’t do that. He wishes he could say why, but he knows the reaction he’ll get when he says _My best friend is a latent criminal_. What would people think then?

“Perhaps you need to set aside your preconceived notions. Things change, time passes, but fundamentally, one’s true character remains the same. What do you think?” Ssambear questions and ends with such decisiveness that Jaemin almost starts to trust it.

“The answer always lies in the story. You just have to listen.”

* * *

Jaemin blinks, refocusing on his monitor screen as it starts flashing red.

“Another one,” Sungchan says, already standing up to pack his things before they head out. “Jaemin?”

Right. Jaemin picks up the CID jacket hanging off the back of his chair, then calls out to Jeno and Chenle, the only two enforcers on duty. For a smaller investigation like today, they decide to forgo the prisoner transport vehicle, opting to just have Jeno and Chenle in the back seat.

He watches Jeno through the rearview mirror, noting how the sunlight dots the tip of his nose and remains perfectly balanced even as he changes lanes. He could watch him forwards, sideways, in reverse. If only forever in one moment of time. Momentarily, he feels grateful for the autopilot.

Sometimes he says something funny — well, Jaemin can’t help his honesty — and he sees Jeno laughing in the reflection. 

“So what have we got today?” He asks Sungchan once they’ve arrived at their destination. He’s parked just outside a block of apartments in the outskirts near Hongdae. Standing up, he straightens the creases on his pants.

“Says here the management was doing its routine inspection and found it suspicious that the toilet’s been broken for weeks, and the resident, Kim Hyunjoon, hasn’t filed a ticket for its repair. He wasn’t at home when they came in, and hasn’t been in following times they checked. He seems to have disappeared,” Sungchan reads from the case file. The holo wavers as rain begins to drizzle. Quickly, they head inside.

“And we’re taking care of this because?” Chenle complains, climbing up the stairs.

Jeno shrugs. “Slow day?”

Jaemin clears his throat. “Let’s go take a look.”

With a set of keys provided to them by the building management, they unlock the front door to the apartment. The hallway to the living room is noiseless, shrouded in shadow, a musty dampness that lingered in the walls as they stride in. The first thing Chenle does is crack open the window.

Apart from the obvious signs that nobody had been living here for weeks, if not months, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. The furniture seems to be in good condition, and the resident’s belongings were arranged neatly, down to the magazines and opened envelopes of bills on the coffee table. The resident even sliced them open cleanly with a pen knife, compared to Jaemin, who’d usually tear open his letters with his fingers.

“I’ll check the rooms,” Jeno says, turning the other way. A moment passes, and he hears Jeno’s voice echo down the hallway: “Yup, the toilet’s definitely broken.”

“Could he just be on a long vacation?” Sungchan asks, wandering around the room.

“Hmm,” Chenle responds, fumbling with the unplugged cords by the desk. “Some of the equipment here’s been unplugged. There definitely was an extra monitor or some equipment here before. But I doubt he’d pack a monitor into his suitcase.”

“Plus, if he had left his house, the street scanners would have picked him up,” Jaemin adds, scrolling through the surveillance records. “There’s no way he can leave undetected that easily. Not in this city.”

“He’s dead,” Chenle jokes offhandedly. 

Emerging into the low light of the morning, Jeno dusts his hands off, setting them on his hips. “And we all know getting killed is easier than disappearing.”

Jaemin pursed his lips, slightly disturbed at the uncanniness of those words coming out of Jeno’s mouth. 

Sungchan pulls out the man’s records as well. “He’s been unemployed for almost two years now, that’s pretty rare in this day and age.”

“But he’s been receiving a steady amount of affiliate income, so he must’ve been an owner of quite a popular CommuField. And he’s still receiving income — the last deposit was only a month ago.”

A popping sound, the sign of the generator kicking back to life. “There,” Chenle says, “Power’s back on.”

Jaemin walks over to the thermostat and reaches out to turn the interior holo on. The yellowed walls fade away, masked over with a regal digital design. In the center of the room, the image of the man’s cabriole sofa appeared glitched, and that only happens when the underlying furniture’s been moved from it’s programmed location. He turns the holo off and ask Sungchan to help him shift the couch aside. 

Like exhuming a grave, from underneath the sofa emerges a deep scratch mark. From the depth of the marking in the hardwood, there was definitely a struggle. Maybe from an iron wrench, or a rod of some sort. Now death seemed like the most plausible explanation.

Wordlessly, Jaemin dispatches an army of crime analysis drones from one of their cases.

Jeno crouches down to take a closer look, snapping on a pair of vinyl gloves. Touching the indent in the floor, he remarks, “This was where they probably attacked him. He put up a struggle and left a mark, but it doesn’t look like he bled out on the floor. A few possibilities as to what happened to the body: they could have dismembered it and disposed of it in parts, some down the rubbish chute, most of it likely down the toilet. Probably explains why it smells nasty in there.”

Jaemin listens to Jeno’s hypothesis intently — it shocks him how quickly Jeno seems to have drawn a conclusion from meager bits of information. He’s still trying to wrap his head around how morbid the idea even is.

“You say that like you’re so sure,” he says, eyeing Jeno suspiciously. 

Jeno cranes his neck up to look at his Inspector. “The longer you are a latent criminal, the more you begin to think like one. Which isn’t a bad thing, since that’s what I’m here for. Isn’t that right, Inspector Na?”

Jeno’s always been the quicker, sharper-witted one out of the pair. Even from before, when they tag teamed. Now, he feels like they’re worlds apart.

“We’ll send the pillbug drones down the pipes. See if what you said was true,” Sungchan follows.

Chenle grins, looking at Jeno. “Wanna bet?”

“Tch, you know I’m right,” Jeno chuckles.

As if bitten by something, Jaemin turns away out of spite.

In the corner of the room, the computer screen flickers on. “Let’s see what was last on here,” Chenle mumbles, slapping the side of the computer tower to give it a little motivation. His fingers fly over the keyboard, and he breaks through the few layers of personal security.

The resident’s screen turns into a shade of pastel pink, and when Jaemin scrutinizes it closely it’s none other than a picture of Ssambear. _No_.

“He’s a Ssambear fan?” It comes out of his mouth instinctively.

Curious, Jeno raises an eyebrow at him, which Jaemin ignores. “ _Ssambear_?”

“Huh, nope,” Chenle says. “He _was_ Ssambear. Who woulda thought?”

“No way,” Jaemin denies, memory still fresh in his mind. “I _just_ spoke to Ssambear a couple hours ago. So if he’s dead…” Jaemin trails off, tracing the skid marks on the floor. “Then who did I talk to this morning?”

* * *

“Looks like we’ve got a case of murder _and_ stolen identity!” Doyoung, the resident analyst for Division Three, says in glee as he claps his hands together. 

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Johnny says.

Doyoung squints at Johnny like he’s an idiot. “Of course! This makes the puzzle even more interesting.”

They’re gathered in the forensics lab, standing before Doyoung’s wall of monitors. They’ve even called Ten and Johnny back in, now that the case has escalated from a missing person report to murder with a motive.

Doyoung turns back to his screen, pulling up the results from the crime scene analysis.

“You were right, Jeno. The pillbug drones did end up finding body parts in the sewers,” he reads from the report. Chenle gives Jeno a high-five, while Ten just grimaces in the lounge seat. “Nasty.”

“The peculiar thing about this is how Ssambear’s been able to go around for two months without raising any suspicion. Plus, his fanbase has been growing consistently since then. His fans haven’t even noticed that the man under the skin has been replaced,” Doyoung continues.

“Who would have a reasonable motive…” Jaemin thinks out loud. “Who could possibly want to be in Ssambear’s position?”

“Don’t go trying to understand the minds of criminals, Jaemin,” Jeno says from across the room. “Think too hard and you’ll get taken in.”

 _He’s right_ , Jaemin knows it. He can’t tell if Jeno’s being kind, or if he’s mocking him, but he sees the expression on Jeno’s face and relaxes the grip of his fists in his pockets.

“Could it be one of his competitors on the leaderboard?” Ten suggests, looking up at the dazzling bright screen. 

“If it was a competitor, wouldn’t they want Ssambear’s ranking to fall then?” Chenle inquires.

“Doyoung, run a search on the leaderboard. Any drastic movements over the past six months?” 

“On it,” Doyoung replies, sending a series of commands into the server. Silence falls among them, only the flurry of beeps from Doyoung’s typing. “Pulling up a line chart tracking leaderboard movements. They’ve remained mostly stable, fluctuations here and there.”

Jaemin hums, following the multitude of colored lines across the board. One in particular catches his attention. “What about that one,” he says, pointing at the red line which had fallen five places since last September.

“It’s just a few ranks,” Sungchan notes. “And this avatar’s still in the top ten.”

It’s the only one that’s fallen consistently though. Jaemin has a hunch about it. 

“This belongs to Rainy Blue, known for its Astro Boy-like appearance. Very nostalgic. Runs a community for retro enthusiasts. And _ohh_ ,” Doyoung eyes widen in glee. “He and Ssambear used to be high school classmates. Coincidence?”

“Suspicious, but we can’t know for sure.”

“His last hue check was two months ago at an annual check-up. Right before Ssambear’s murder. It was still a light blue,” Johnny says. 

“And he hasn’t been caught by street scanners since?” Ten asks. 

Johnny looks over and shrugs his shoulders. “More suspicious, if you ask me. A potential motive and suspicious behavior to match.”

“And there’s a planned fanmeet happening in Hongdae tonight that’s invited all the top avatars, Rainy Blue and Ssambear included,” Jeno finds from a quick internet search. “It’s unlikely for them to miss it — affiliates depend on their popularity to make a living, and not showing up to public events would look bad on them. If either of them don’t show up, another clue to add to our list. If both Rainy Blue and Ssambear do show up, then well, even better. We’ll get to find out who’s wearing his skin.”

“Sounds like we’re going to the club!” Ten chirps, loud and bright.

* * *

Jaemin heads home for a fresh set of clothes. _Can’t go undercover in a suit_ , he reasons, knowing that if he did show up in one he’d stick out like a sore thumb. He stares blankly at his closet, not knowing where to begin.

God, it’s been years since he went to a club. He scrunches his eyes and tries to recall. It probably was sometime in his third year of university when a bunch of them headed down to M2. They’d got there before 10pm for free cover, and spent the next two hours miserably sober on an empty dance floor. _Yeah, that’s why we don’t go clubbing_.

He picks something easy: a black t-shirt and a pair of straight jeans, distressed at the hem. He slips on a thin wool coat, loose enough to allow room to holster his dominator on his back. He doesn’t think too much of his outfit — what should it matter anyway, he’s on a mission — that is, until he arrives at Club Cocoon.

Jeno’s standing by the entrance with the rest of them, but Jaemin’s eyes search and find him first. He’s looking somewhere else, eyes following the bright spotlights emanating from the fixtures in the club’s exterior, chasing its path as the milky light peters out into the night. His tight-fitting skinny jeans sheath nicely the strong columns of his thighs. His leather jacket hangs comfortably on his shoulders. He sees Jaemin approaching and turns to wave softly. 

Jaemin’s not blind. He has eyes. Jeno’s always looked good, even when he used to make jokes to hide behind it. 

“You’re here,” Jeno breathes, a cloud of formless white mist leaving his lips.

And Jaemin just nods dumbly, dumb because of the cold weather, and because he’s noticed that Jeno’s styled his hair with pomade. It looks nice.

He tears his attention away to talk to Sungchan.

“While the three of you head inside, Ten, Chenle and I will stake the exits and check the compound for possible escape routes,” Sungchan says confidently.

The inside of Club Cocoon is lined with a motley of neon colors: blue, green, red. The vibe is elemental, walls brick and concrete with industrial pipes exposed to fit the early 2020 aesthetic. A deep, guttural beat pulsates through the ground and thumps up his back.

They decide to break up across the dance floor. It’s early at 11pm, and the VIPs have yet to arrive, so Jaemin takes the time to get acquainted. Johnny makes eye contact with him from the balcony, sending him a casual salute. 

Jaemin leans against a relatively deserted corner at the bar counter, away from the small crowd that has gathered around the bartender to get his attention. It was surprisingly crowded for 11pm, and the guy-to-girl ratio was admittedly above expectation. He watches the crowd, nodding occasionally to pretend to vibe with the music, and hopes to the high heavens that he doesn’t look like a total nerd. The bartender does eventually come to ask if he’s got anything to order, given he’s been standing in the corner for twenty minutes, but Jaemin just shakes his head politely.

He spots Jeno across the dance floor, where he’s leaned against a pillar with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Jaemin knows what he’s supposed to be doing, but he can’t help but watch him from the corner of his vision. 

There’s something wrong with him, and Jaemin can sense it in himself. Maybe he was still reeling in disbelief that Jeno was there before his eyes, but no… it’s something different this time. It’s on the tip of his tongue and then Jaemin tastes it, a cold, bitter sting, when he spots a man amble towards Jeno, alcohol sloshing in his cup.

Jaemin watches keenly and angrily as the man leans over, giving his glass a shake to indicate the obvious. _Can I buy you a drink_? God, Jaemin wants to sock him in the face. And Jeno has the audacity to look like he doesn’t understand. The man grabs Jeno by his bicep boldly, and to be frank Jaemin doesn’t register when exactly he’d lost it, because at the next moment he’s already there standing between them, shoving the douchebag away.

“Geez,” the man grumbles, rubbing at his shoulder, before slinking away into the crowd.

A hiccup of laughter comes from behind him, and Jaemin whips around to see Jeno muffling his mouth with the back of his hand. “What was that?” he teases, his eyes curved into crescents. 

And he’s close. Under the prismatic layers of light Jaemin can clearly see the small mole under his right eye, his skin a brilliant, rose pink. Jaemin catches the faint scent of his cologne, the same one he’d been wearing since forever. He’s so close that he can feel his own heartbeat pulse, a ticking time bomb closing in on him, an aperture winding down so that all he can see, all he can smell, is Jeno.

What Jaemin does next is normal. He panics.

* * *

The avatars make their appearance about a quarter before midnight, emerging from one of the VIP lounges. They look fantastical with their holos turned on — Spooky Boogie and her thin, skeletal outfit, Talisman and his four face jester, and of course Rainy Blue trails behind them, his childish appearance in stark contrast to the other two. To Jaemin’s surprise, the last avatar out in the crowd is Ssambear itself.

“Shepherd 1. Both targets are in the building, I repeat, both targets are in the building,” Jaemin lifts his glass of soda to his mouth to hide himself talking. He’d run back to his corner by the bar after the _incident_ , and had stayed put there ever since. 

He makes eye contact with Jeno and Johnny, who are now near the stage.

“Shepherd 2. Front exit secure. Hound 2 and 3 on standby.”

The avatars are pushing through the crowd when all of a sudden a sharp, shrill signal interference pierces their ears. Jaemin holds his temple in pain. When he looks up, all of the holos have dissolved, consumed in static, before coming back in the likeness of Ssambear. Even if people in the crowd weren’t donning their holos earlier, they now were donned in a Ssambear holo too.

 _Shit_. It was a trap and they fell right into it.

He tries to get Johnny’s or Jeno’s attention, but it’s too late, because they’ve already slipped their dominators out of their holsters and were aiming it at the crowd.

“The MWPSB!” Someone shouts in alarm.

“It’s a raid, it’s a raid!” Someone else echos.

Pandemonium erupts and people start running. 

“Good god,” Jaemin scowls, watching it all unfold. If all the holos looked alike, the only way to identify a criminal would be to point a dominator at them. Unfortunately, not everybody in a grungy basement club has the purest of hues. Johnny and Jeno are pointing at different targets, and one by one, citizens with above regulation crime coefficients start dropping like flies.

“Shepherd 1,” Jaemin alarms the comms. “Situation’s getting out of hand, order to stand down. Shepherd 2, how are the exits looking?”

The line fizzles, interrupted by static, then Sungchan comes online. “Terrible, it’s like a stampede here. The entire club is fleeing.”

 _Fuck_. _Okay, Jaemin, think_.

“The street scanners. Are any of them picking up the paths of any of our targets?” 

Chenle says, “Nam Seojun, man behind the Rainy Blue avatar. Street scanners picked him up near the entrance of a park nearby.”

“Got it,” Jaemin grits. “Send us the coordinates and we’ll meet you there.”

Jaemin tightens his grip around his dominator as he runs up the flight of stairs to the exit. His AI device feeds him directions in-ear. As expected, Johnny and Jeno speed ahead of him, catching on the tailwind. 

They arrive at the park in a few minutes. Nam Seojun is not difficult to spot — he’s a scrawny man in his late twenties, the type that looks like he never leaves his room for more than an hour a day. Ten and Chenle have him cornered by the small pond off the pavement.

Jaemin points his Dominator at him.

_Crime Coefficient is 114._

_Enforcement mode is non-lethal paralyzer._

_Safety will be released._

“Please, don’t! I didn’t do anything wrong!” The man wails, backing away. 

“Stand still and do not resist,” Chenle says in a low register, but the man continues to back towards the water. His foot catches on a rock and _shit_ , he’s tumbling down the slope into the water.

Instinctively, Jeno sheds his leather jacket and dives in after him. Jaemin dashes to the water’s edge, searching the surface for any hint of struggle, any thrashing under the water, but the pond is calm, and small waves lap against the stone edge. Jeno’s paddling towards them, lugging a limp body.

With Johnny’s help, they haul the both of them back up to the ground. Ten’s checking on the man’s vitals — he’s alive, just passed out from the stress. Chenle begins the administrative work of logging the man’s details into the system. And Sungchan’s on the phone with the ministry’s back-up personnel, who were still at Club Cocoon picking up the paralyzed bodies.

Jaemin turns to Jeno and he’s sopping wet, his white shirt clinging onto his body like a second skin.

“Idiot,” he chides, looking at him directly, loud enough for Jeno to hear. And then he’s shrugging off his wool coat to wrap them around Jeno’s shoulders.

Again, he’s close, and Jaemin realizes then that everything he’s tried to hide is in plain sight for Jeno to see.

Dumbfounded, Jeno’s mouth parts open in an _O_ , and softly, he asks: “You’re my friend again?”

 _An absolute idiot, this boy was_. 

Jaemin’s gaze drops to Jeno’s parted lips. 

“Who said I stopped?”

* * *

Thankfully, they get to pick up the rest of the work the next day. The night team’s handled all the processing. A total of ten latent criminals were picked up in Club Cocoon, all of them with crime coefficients only slightly above regulation, so a few sessions of mental therapy should do the trick.

“Last night was messy,” Sungchan says to him as they’re making coffee in the pantry. The coffee machine churns in the background, bubbling foam from the nozzle. Sungchan likes his coffee with extra milk.

Jaemin gulps down his black. “Ya, messy,” he agrees. “But you did well.”

* * *

Jeno spots the two inspectors standing by the coffee machine when he gets into work early. He checks his watch — fifteen minutes till morning stand-up. That’s more than enough time.

“Hey,” he calls out to the both of them. He hones in on Jaemin in particular. “Can I speak to you for a sec?”

They head out onto the open air garden on the thirteenth floor. It’s a sunny day, warmer than it had been all week, the great white sun encroaching the zenith of the sky. Jaemin takes a long sip from his mug, his hands slightly red in the cold. Jeno remembered when in university they’d snuck outside on the coldest day of the year and tossed a pot of hot water in the air, watching it vaporize instantly. Jaemin had thought to try it with coffee, but eventually changed his mind when he realized that it would go to waste.

Jeno recalls those times fondly — it was what got him through the past year in his loneliest moments.

He glances sideways at Jaemin while the other isn’t looking. His hair is undone today, loose strands falling between his eyes. Even under the light it is ink-colored, darker than dark, and it brought to him a degree of maturity that Jeno wasn’t used to. After all, the last time he’d seen him his hair was pastel blue.

Jaemin clears his throat.

“If you’ve got something to say then you should spit it out.”

Jeno wrings his hands on the parapet ledge, feeling the ice cold metal bite at his skin.

“It’s just been a while. I don’t know where to begin,” he sighs, feeling heavy.

“You’ve always been like that — diving into things without thinking it through, without knowing where’d you end up.” 

Jeno tuts his lips in protest because he _did_ think this through. Multiple times even.

“That’s how we ended up in MWPSB,” Jaemin supplements, in case Jeno forgets. “Joining was your idea.”

“And you followed,” Jeno counters.

“Tch,” Jaemin huffs. He lowered his mug to the parapet with a clink. 

“Turned out better than expected though, you have to agree,” Jeno says, thinking about the perks of the job. There was a good balance of desk and field work, the job wasn’t boring, and it was also highly respected in society.

“Yeah, totally love to see blown up bodies on a daily basis,” Jaemin deadpans. He shifts to sneak a glance at Jeno and finds him already there. They burst out laughing.

“I’m still the same me,” Jeno says, a beat later. He knows it’s futile to insist, and Jaemin will probably never understand, but he’s convinced himself that if he can get back a modicum of what they used to have, he’d be okay.

 _I still believe in the same things. Want the same things._ Jeno wishes he could explain, but some thoughts are meant to be kept a secret. At least in this society, it’s dangerous to think too far.

Jaemin remains silent, staring out at the horizon.

His watch beeps a reminder for their morning huddle.

Looking down at his own watch, Jaemin’s face hardens. “We should head inside.”

* * *

Jeno watches Jaemin and Sungchan from behind the one-way mirror. Ten’s snuck in some potato chips, sensing it’s going to take awhile. He shakes the bag of sour cream & onion in front of him, to which Jeno politely declines.

“I swear I’m a good citizen!” The man exclaims as soon as the door cracks open. 

Jaemin drags out a chair and sits himself down. He opens up a binder and begins leafing through the pages, his eyebrows furrowing and fingers tapping impatiently on the corner of his file.

“Your crime coefficient doesn’t suggest so,” Jaemin says, voice authoritative. “So tell me, Nam Seojun. Rainy Blue. Why do you think you’re here today?”

The hair on Jeno’s arm stands. Jaemin’s playing bad cop — he always has. The spot next to him was where Jeno used to sit. And now Sungchan’s there, placing his interlaced hands on the table.

“Seojun-ssi, we’d really like to get through this interview smoothly and clear your name.”

The man looks between the two Inspectors. “Am I here because I’ve been late on my credit card bills?”

Ten chokes back a laugh, coughing on his chips.

Sungchan glances at Jaemin, who’s shaking his head. “No no no, we’re the MWPSB, we don’t deal with that stupid shit. Look, I’ll be direct. Rainy Blue, your ranking’s been falling on the leaderboard lately. Is that why you’re behind on your bills?”

“What?” The man says, unsettled. “I.. yes, my affiliate income has not been as stable as it used to.”

“And what in ways have you tried to improve it?”

“I used to run events to discuss old films and vintage collectibles almost every day, but it’s been hard. You kind of need the right headspace to process and prepare all that information for a daily audience.”

Sungchan interrupts. “The right kind of headspace? What do you mean by that?”

The man bites on his lower lip. “Well, for some of these items it’s hard to find information on the web. It could be anything as random as an old schoolgirl’s lunchbox from the 1940s, or a baseball bat from the KBO League from the 2000s. Many books from that time were destroyed in the war, and we can only guess the lives those owners lived from our collective imagination. I digress, but coming up with such ideas used to be easier when I had my close collaborator with me.”

“So you gather your community every day to do some story telling,” Jaemin summarizes. “With stories you’ve made up.”

“No!” The man responds.

Sungchan tries the softer approach. “And the close collaborator you mentioned… Any chance you know of Kim Hyunjoon?”

At the mention of the name, Nam Seojun perks up in his seat. “Yes, yes, I know him. We used to be best friends. He was my close collaborator.”

“You used the past tense,” Jaemin highlights. “So you’re no longer friends. What happened?”

“It’s weird. We used to text each other all the time, call even, when time permits. It’s busy being an affiliate. Once a fortnight or so we’d get a drink at a Pojangmacha. But lately he’s been ignoring my messages. I visited his CommuField once, and he acted as if he didn’t know me.”

“If it makes you feel better, Kim Hyunjoon was ignoring you for a good reason. He’s dead. Has been dead, for the last two months,” Jaemin says. 

The man slumps in his seat in disbelief. “He’s… dead?” Dismayed, he buries his face in his hands. 

“Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to you?” Sungchan asks.

The man shakes his head. “Other than the fact that he stopped talking to me, he was still running his CommuField as per normal. I’d just assumed he’d got too busy for me.”

“And the reason why it’s been months since you had a hue check?” Jaemin asks.

“Uh. Running Rainy Blue is basically my job. I never leave my house.”

“Not for groceries?” Sungchan asks.

“Delivery.”

“Not to meet friends?” Sungchan presses further.

“Hyunjoon was my only friend.”

Jaemin scrubs his face with his hand, then closes his binder shut. “I think we’re done here.”

* * *

“So, Rainy Blue didn’t do it, we can rule that out,” Jaemin concludes when they’re back at the drawing board. Then, he diverts his attention back to Doyoung’s monitors. “There’s a lot of damage control underway in the affiliate community.”

“Whoever killed Kim Hyunjoon is more sophisticated than we thought. They were expecting us at Club Cocoon that night,” Jeno continues from Jaemin’s line of thought. He leans his weight forward onto the couch in Doyoung’s lab, studying the text on the screen.

Something lights up in Doyoung’s eyes. “I just remembered something,” he says, swivelling his chair back to his keyboard, where he begins typing furiously. “We’ve been having trouble tracking Ssambear’s IP address, but after the incident last night, we managed to salvage the frequency distortion codes he used. Using that, I created a model shell — here, let me plug in live data from his CommuField feed right now.”

Doyoung proceeds to do as he explained.

In an instant, the model runs itself. One function, chained to another, and out the other end spits out coordinates.

“Ssambear is logged into the CommuField from…” Doyoung reads slowly, pausing at the absurdity of it. “Yonsei University chemistry building?”

“It always ends up being these mad scientists,” Ten jokes.

Jeno’s lips curl into a smile. “You know how it is with these folks. They never know when to stop looking.” 

He can empathize with it. He could see himself fall into it, if he wanted to, but he keeps himself tethered so that he doesn’t lose his freedom entirely. The feeling of being freed from the burden of monitoring his hue was indescribable, yet terrifying at the same time.

_And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee._

* * *

Division Three rides in two cars to remain inconspicuous, forgoing the large, menacing prisoner transport vehicle. Sungchan takes Ten and Johnny. Chenle and Jeno ride with Jaemin — both call shotgun, but Jeno wins by shoving Chenle into the back seat with sheer force. Grumpily, Chenle crosses his arms and sulks in the back the entire way.

Jeno leans on the car door as Jaemin drives. It almost feels like it used to. 

They make a plan to search the entire building. Given the limitations of Doyoung’s computation, the coordinates were not specific enough to locate the exact floor and room, so they’d just have to divide and conquer. Their dominators were to remain concealed as much as possible in a public institution, but all enforcers were given permission to enforce at will when the need arose.

Splitting in pairs, Jaemin and Jeno start from the top floor. It’s mainly labs and offices, and the hallways are quiet.

“I wonder who it is,” Jeno mumbles idly, holding his Dominator with both hands as they comb through the rooms. They tread lightly through the store room, which was filled to the brim with decade-old computers, coated in dust and laid out neatly on the shelves like bodies in a morgue.

“If we’re in a chemistry building then he must be a weirdo,” Jaemin concludes prematurely. 

“You used to like chemistry in high school,” Jeno adds. “Weirdo.”

Jaemin rolls his eyes “Keyword is _used to_ ,” he rebukes.

Giving the room a once over, he says, “Clear.”

They slip into the next room, and the next room after that. The labs are a swamp of bizarre equipment, hoods filled to the brim with jars and flasks and benches stacked with lab notebooks. Because it’s a weekend, it is relatively empty, save for a couple graduate students or two working at their counters.

“First floor, clear,” Jaemin hears through his comms. Looks like the other pairs haven’t had much luck either.

They split up to check different sections. Jaemin’s walking down the aisles when he spots a dim, ash-blue glow emanating from one of the postdoctoral offices. He approaches with careful footsteps, the whinnies of a running computer terminal becoming more apparent. Jaemin takes a gulp, shifting uneasily with his back pressed against the wall.

Through the window of the office door he inches forward to get a better view — there is a woman at her desk, donning her VR helmet and gloves. She’s short, her legs stubby in her midi skirt, her VR gloves looking like ski gloves on her hands. Weird that she’s in her lab on a Saturday to be logged into a CommuField, but nothing else fits the bill — they’re looking for a murderer, after all. And judging from her appearance, Jaemin doubts that this is it.

Still, better to check and clear the floor.

“This is the Bureau of Public Safety,” he announces, pushing the door open. His voice in the quiet room startles the woman. “Disconnect from the server and cooperate with our investigation.”

He powers up his dominator, bringing the gun up to point at her body. He awaits for her to remove her helmet to complete the cymatic scan. She’s standing there frozen, unresponsive to his command, and Jaemin wonders if she even heard him.

“The MWPSB?” She repeats, slipping her fingers out of her gloves and searching for the console on her table. Her hand hovers over the buttons.

“I’ll just need to scan your psycho pass and I’ll be on my way,” he says, insistent and waiting.

In an instant, she shucks her helmet off forcefully and makes a run for the door, pushing past Jaemin so quickly it catches him off balance. _Oh fuck_ , he cursed under his breath, and immediately alerts Jeno through the comms. “Target located, woman in late 20s, on the run.”

He sprints, chasing the sound of desperate footfalls, zigzagging through the lab benches. It was trouble enough navigating around the haphazard lab stools, but he catches sight of her down the row, her eyes wide and wild. Her white coat swooshes when she halts in her tracks, turns, and tosses a flask at him with an overhead swing.

It doesn’t hurt when the glass breaks against his chest — it’s too fast for him to register it. The pink liquid is running down his shirt and pants, smelling of something both metallic and synthetic, but when he tries to take a step his body doesn’t budge. Looking down, he notices magenta foam rising and enveloping him like a snare. What the hell?

“That’s enough!” Jaemin jerks his head to Jeno, who is walking up towards them. He’s trained his dominator on the woman, the piercing blue light from the dominator flickering in his eyes. As he moves closer, Jaemin hears clearly his heavy breathing. He’s _angry_.

“Put the weapon down,” she threatens, glaring at Jeno. Out from her pocket she pulls out a lighter, holding it close to Jaemin’s immobile body. “One step closer and he goes up in flames. And I wouldn’t count on the sprinklers — contact with water will trigger a phreatic explosion.” 

Jaemin doesn’t even know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.

Around him, the pink foam has hardened into a jelly-like cocoon around his limbs. The harder he struggles, the closer the jelly pushes back against him. He wishes he could be useful, but he knows better than to act without fully understanding what he’d been trapped in.

His eyes return to Jeno. Jaemin sees columns of blue flickering in his pupils, shimmering like light on the surface of a river. He sees beyond the eyes to the man in front of him — to the tousled blue-black hair and scuffed jaw, the square shoulders and sturdy stance. Jeno, who had in a span of a few years, assumed the mantle of manhood. Like a flame at the end of its wick, the light from Jeno’s eyes slowly peters out, returning them to a deep brown, a darkness under his heavy brows.

Jeno lowers his dominator to the ground, his eyes never leaving Jaemin.

“Kick it over,” the woman commands.

Jeno pushes the dominator over, metal skidding across the floor.

The woman picks it up and points the gun at him, pressing on the trigger only to meet the system’s error warning.

_Warning. Non-registered user. Trigger will be locked._

Undeterred, she takes the dominator with her, backing out of the room. Jeno’s standing still. _What the hell is he doing?_ Jaemin thinks. He could have tackled her by now. Or done _something_. 

“If you come after me I’ll set the sprinklers on,” she continues.

Jeno nods grimly.

Step by step, she moves towards the door, and Jaemin watches in horror as one, they’re losing possession of a million dollar weapon, and two, Jeno’s doing nothing about it. Jaemin’s blinking furiously at him, trying to send a signal. _Hello?_ Then the woman slips out the door and makes a run for it.

“Jeno! What are you doing? Go after her!” He shouts as soon as she’s left. 

“Not until we get you out of here,” Jeno says, coming towards him with hurrying footsteps. He places a tentative touch on the hardened jelly to check if the substance would transfer onto his skin, and once he confirmed that it doesn’t, he hauls Jaemin over his shoulder in one swift motion.

“What,” Jaemin yelps, voice strangled. Blood rushes to his face as he dangles over Jeno’s shoulder. He’s so embarrassed that he’s glad he doesn’t have to look Jeno in the face, but more importantly:

“This is so against protocol. You let her get away! With a dominator! What the hell are you doing?”

“Saving your dumb ass,” Jeno says.

“Ack,” Jaemin struggles, and the casing grows tighter. Goddammit. “I don’t need your protection.”

“And yet here we are,” Jeno rebukes, tilting over slightly to press the elevator button.

While he waits, he alerts Sungchan on his comms. “Hound 4. Shepherd 1 is down. Escorting him to safety. Target’s escaped with my dominator but she is trackable with the GPS in the gun.”

Sungchan buzzes in: “On it, we are converging on the location. We have it covered.”

The line beeps when communication’s ended. Jaemin strains to look at Jeno, but all he can see is the back of his head. “Bold of you to lie about how things went down in my presence,” he points out. 

“I know you can keep a secret. And stop wiggling, you’re only going to make it worse,” Jeno responds. 

“You could have just come for me later,” Jaemin reasons.

Jeno pauses, and for a short window of time the endless whir of elevator gears fills the silence. Then, a little bit too late, Jeno says: “I left you behind once, and I swore I’d never do it again.”

Jaemin closes his eyes, trying to recall, but nothing comes to his mind. Jeno’s being cryptic for absolutely no reason, so Jaemin asks, quietly, “What happened?”

Jeno keeps mum, humming to himself until the elevator makes its peaceful descent down to the ground floor. 

* * *

Jaemin suffers the utter humiliation of having to ride lying down in the back seat all the way back to HQ. Chenle snapped a picture of him while he was entirely indisposed, and he was convinced his day couldn’t get any worse until he realized that Doyoung had also filmed Jeno carrying him into the med bay. By then the foam had spread up his neck and to the sides of his face, and he supposed, if it were to swallow him whole entirely, it wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

They managed to apprehend the culprit using non-lethal paralyzer mode. Sungchan and the rest of the team had emerged from the chemistry unscathed, and it made Jaemin wonder why he got so unlucky. As soon as the culprit comes to, they’ll have to undergo a thorough investigation.

Dissolving the hardened foam takes about thirty minutes under Doyoung’s care. After identifying the compound, he gathers the right equipment and chips away at the material, occasionally adding some solvent with a plastic dropper to break through the layers. 

Jeno stays by his side the entire time, watching in both fascination and relief. When Doyoung finally breaks through and pulls it off of Jaemin, he releases an audible sigh. He pulls up a chair to sit next to Jaemin’s bed.

Jaemin unbuttons the cuffs of his dress shirt to check the skin underneath it, thankful that he’s escaped without injury. Even after checking in the handheld mirror, the skin on his neck was at most a tinge drier. _What a kind villain_ , he muses. He sets the mirror down quietly, his awareness of the room heightened. It was hard to ignore the scratchy polyester of the med bay blanket, the blindingly bright lights, and Jeno’s unwavering attention.

Under the pressure of Jeno’s gaze Jaemin turns away. He knows the feeling manifesting in his gut.

“Thanks,” he finally remembers to say. It comes out soft as a whisper.

“Mm,” Jeno nods. “Of course.”

Jaemin gathers the blanket in his fists as he tries to think about what to say. The silence only lasts a while longer before Jaemin opens his mouth: “You don’t have to stay here with me if you’ve got other things to do.”

And he doesn’t mean to be dismissive, but any moment longer with Jeno and he thinks he’ll lose his mind. 

Jeno straightens in his seat, as if struck with a new purpose.

“Right, yeah,” he fumbles. “I should get going.” 

He gathers his jacket and heads for the door, lingering for a moment to say goodbye, and then he’s gone. 

* * *

Thoughts linger as Jaemin strips out of his suit at the end of the day. He drops his slacks and shirt into the laundry basket and turns back to the mirror to look at his reflection, remembering the uncomfortable boniness of his ribs, of his elbows, the odd angles they formed under the light. That was a year ago. He didn’t understand it then, and you never do in the midst of grief, but he does now.

He sucks in a long, deep breath.

There was no denying what he felt for Jeno. It just took a long, winding path for him to find out. And he should feel repulsed for feeling so — for his entire life he’d been conditioned to hate latent criminals — but he can’t find it in himself to continue anymore. The hatred, the anger, the pain — it all flushed down with the rest of his preconceived notions.

 _I’m still the same me_ , Jeno had said.

And Jaemin knows him. Jaemin knows him better than anyone else.

He splashes some water on his face. Takes a long, hot shower. When he’s back in the kitchen in his pajamas he pops his takeout into the microwave for a couple minutes. With a hot bowl of kimchi fried rice, he settles by the window to finish his dinner.

He’s still got today’s incident report to write, and he could finish it up now and still have enough time to decompress in front of the TV later, so he pulls out his laptop and continues working. In the middle of it, he briefly considers whether to leave out some of the details of the day’s proceedings. While Jeno had gone against protocol, he did kind of save his life, and if it didn’t hurt anyone… Jaemin pauses, his cursor blinking expectantly in front of his eyes.

He’s about to click submit when, by accident, he clicks on Jeno’s enforcer profile. _Oh shit_ , Jaemin panics because he’d been working on the report for the last half an hour.

Text to speech automatically kicks in, and it reads Jeno’s profile, loud and clear:

_Lee Jeno. Enforcer. Male. 25 years old. Former Inspector._

_While investigating MWPSB Special Case 202, his crime coefficient rapidly increased. To save the life of an inspector, he unlawfully executed a citizen with a non-Sibyl authorized weapon. His crime coefficient deviated from regulation value and he was demoted to Enforcer._

_What?_

It hits him like a bucket of ice-cold water. His breath catches in his throat and he feels like he’s underwater, his heart thudding in his ears. All the lost pieces of his memory rise to the surface at the same time, and it’s so overwhelming that he has no choice but to confront them. His bowl of fried rice almost drops to the floor.

Jeno is a latent criminal… because of _him_?

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♡ jaemin finally unleashes his repressed feelings ╥﹏╥ this chapter was just jaemin looking at jeno the whole time   
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **content warnings:** brief descriptions of violence and injury, very minor character death (minor characters with made up names). i also imply they have sex but it’s just one sentence i swear lol

_“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”_

_George Orwell_

It is near sunset on June 12th, 2053, when results of the Sibyl exam are released. They’re standing on one of the outdoor decks outside the Ministry of Education, overlooking the Seoul skyline. The glimmering glass facades of skyscrapers shine ochre and fire, the kind of color one would expect of autumn. Time was catching up to them, _speeding_ ahead of them, right before they realized it.

Among the crowd in the event hall, Jaemin picks Jeno out and pulls him outside.

There, he finally gets to ask: “So, how’d you do?”

Jeno’s dressed in his lucky hoodie today — the ratty, off-black Incheon Electroland Elephants hoodie his mother had given him when he was in middle school. It was so large then, but large enough for him to grow into so that now, in university, it fit nicely around his torso. His glasses catch the glint of the setting sun.

“I haven’t opened my envelope yet, have you?” He asks, pulling it out from under his arms.

“Me neither,” Jaemin echos, holding his own envelope between both hands. It’s feather light, the sharpness of the edges on his fingertips a prescient warning of the pain to come — but that’s something he’ll only come to know in retrospect. Presently, he sneaks Jeno a glance.

“At the same time?” He asks, knowing that Jeno’s already thinking the same thing, and on the countdown Jaemin reminds himself to be happy with whatever the outcome is.

Arranged in no particular order, his report lists the industries and jobs that best match his skills and abilities. 

_The Chosun Ilbo - Journalist_

_Ministry of Manpower - Analyst_

_Ministry of Welfare, Public Safety Bureau - Inspector_

There’s more on the list, but Jaemin stops reading after that. Inching towards Jeno, he asks tentatively (because you never know how these things turn out), “Did you get what you wanted?”

He knows what Jeno’s wanted to do since Day One — become an Inspector. But of course, wanting something badly doesn’t mean that he’ll get it. At the end of the day, the decision lies with Sibyl.

Jeno hugs his report to his chest before Jaemin can sneak a peek. One look at Jeno’s face and Jaemin knows the answer. The spread smile on his face is so wide, it’s almost as if he’d just seen a world wonder.

“Ugh, come back here, _Inspector_ Lee!” Jaemin complains, tugging on Jeno’s sleeve, but Jeno ducks and slides away, running towards the blindingly bright light. It is habit as much as ritual.

Jaemin follows, because this is how it’s always been.

* * *

“So why an Inspector, of all choices?”

“Because I believe in people. To protect the people I love, the law must be protected. And there’s where I think I can make a difference.”

* * *

By the time Jaemin realizes he’d left the house in his pajamas he’s already almost at the Ministry of Welfare. Forget how stupid he looks in his Ryan the Lion t-shirt and sweatpants — he’s got a more pressing issue to deal with. Ungracefully, he swerves head-in into his designated parking spot, runs into the elevator, and fidgets impatiently as the numbers tick upwards.

* * *

Jeno’s just on the cusp of drifting into sleep when his front door is unceremoniously thrown open, his dark studio now flooded with the cool white light from the corridor. Jeno sits up in his bed, blanket pooling at his hips. The door stands ajar, and the silhouette of a figure bracketing the door frames is stark, clean cut as if stenciled out of the light. He knows the shape of that body, even if half-asleep.

He shifts out of bed, turning on the lamp on his nightstand. Once the front door closes, the room diffuses into a warmer, orange glow. Jaemin’s running to him, running _into_ him, and Jeno catches him by the sides of his body. He senses his distress from the way he’s shaking, and from the coldness of his skin.

“You idiot,” slips out of his mouth by way of greeting, an old habit. _You idiot, you asshole, you made me worried_. “Why aren’t you wearing your coat?” 

Still holding onto Jaemin’s sides, he shifts backwards to give the other a once over, and noting the cartoon Ryan doing a front wheel lift on a bicycle, he adds: “Cute shirt.”

“You,” Jaemin starts, stops, and lets out a shaky breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jeno blinks. 

“Tell you what?” He asks, even when he knows what the answer is.

“Why you’re here,” Jaemin emphasizes. “Why you’re here _because of_ _me_.”

Jaemin shrugs out of Jeno’s hold, and it forces Jeno to look him in the face. There, he sees the rings of red around the boy’s eyes. Underneath it, the small discolored acne scars on his cheek, now come into the light after everything’s been removed — the makeup, the built-up walls. 

Jeno chews on his bottom lip. 

“You might want to sit down before you hear this,” Jeno says. He guides Jaemin to the dining table. Before he starts, he puts on the kettle to make some tea.

“Chrysanthemum?”

“You got anything else?” 

“Not if you want to be able to fall asleep tonight.”

Jaemin purses his lips in compromise, “Fine.”

Jeno turns back to the dining table when he’s done. Jaemin’s calmed down by now, waiting expectantly. When he receives his tea, he cups the mug between his palms to warm his skin up.

Jeno looks down at the wisps of vapor rising from his tea. He waits, knowing that if he tried to drink it now he’d burn his tongue. When he’s gathered his composure, he starts.

“You probably don’t remember a thing about MWPSB case 202, don’t you?”

* * *

For Jeno, the memory of MWPSB case 202 was as clear as day. It wasn’t something he could easily forget. After all, it was the day his whole life changed.

It was about this time of the day, one year ago. They were en route to the scene of a crime somewhere in the northern outskirts of Seoul. Rarely did they make a trip this far out of town — they had, up till that point, mostly been tasked to handle small infractions: therapy defectors, vandalism, the occasional robbery. _Not quite the exciting, drug busting life we’d thought we’d have, eh?_ Jaemin had joked once when they were doing bike patrols in the Seoul Olympic Park. Two years later and there they were, hot on the tails of a string of related murder cases.

Jeno stopped the car outside the South entrance of Bukhansan National Park, looking out through the side window to see if he could spot any movement in the distance. The snow fell vertical and silent. The mountains were darker against the dark night. He turned off the ignition and plunged the car into silence.

Next to him, Jaemin maintained a still face, but he saw how he’d been nervously tugging at his slacks, and how they wrinkled they were now, under his palms.

“Hey,” he touched a hand to Jaemin’s forearm to ground him. “We got this.”

Jaemin returned a look. “Yeah, I know,” he grunts, shrugging it off before unlocking the passenger door. 

They were accompanied by all four of their enforcers for the day’s investigation: Park Youngmin-sunsengnim, a pre-Sibyl police detective in his fifties; Lee Sora, Sibyl-approved musician turned criminal; Song Jaebum, a former soldier in his thirties; and Lee Suho, who was just about their age, but had been a latent criminal since his teens. 

They were a rag-tag bunch, but over time Jeno had grown fond of them. He knew where each of their strengths lay and how to best utilize them. He’d discussed this extensively with Jaemin in the car — that’s why he was convinced that nothing could go wrong.

For months now they’d been following a series of seemingly unrelated cases. The perpetrators across cases knew nothing about one another, but they had one thing in common — they were provided the resources to act from a common source. At that point, the identity of that common source was unclear. The culprits were given an old blackberry phone, one from the early 2000s which kind of looked like a brick. The phone could do nothing other than receive text messages on its neon-green backlit screen.

Fortunately for the CID, surveillance of suspects was made easy with the widespread cameras across town. Once they’d locked in on the mastermind’s next victim, they then tracked the next victim’s movements. And because he was living in a public university dorm, it was legal to access the in-room holos as well. Through the cameras, they identified the meet-up location: Bukhansan National Park.

Jeno picked his dominator up from its case, reading the case notes which were displayed at the edges of his peripheral vision, in case he needed access to them. The connection to the grid was spotty at best this far out from HQ, so Sora and Suho rolled out two carts of connection equipment to boost the signal. Once they were in the hilly trails and the underground bunkers, they would need to lure the criminals to the hotspot areas to run the cymatic scans and deal them their fate.

Sora stayed behind by the cars, monitoring the satellite dish and drone feed, while the rest of them split into two teams. Jeno, along with one enforcer, would act as the decoy team. Meanwhile, Jaemin and two other enforcers planned to seal off most of the escape paths with explosives, which were to be deployed upon Jaemin’s signal. Once the exits have been sealed, the only way out would be through the main entrance, which would be right where Jeno would be waiting.

The plan was solid — even Jaebum agreed, and he was a soldier! Jeno crouched behind several bushes, tracking the stream of updates that came from Sora, who monitored the movements of the university student as he travelled through the bunkers. Updates from the other team arrived as whispers, so as to not raise suspicion. 

“Shepherd 2. Explosives are a go,” Jaemin’s voice came through the line. “3, 2..”

The plan moved into the next phase, and Jeno felt the earth beneath him quake.

“They’re moving towards the exit,” Sora updated the team, her voice steady amidst the chaos. 

“Commencing pursuit,” Jaemin grit through his teeth, breath heavy. Then, “ _Fuck—”_

Jeno straightened in his position, alertness heightened. “Jaem?” 

He was met with silence on the other line for a moment. “Hound 1,” Youngmin’s self-identification came a beat too late, but Jeno was nevertheless thankful. “There’s more of them than we anticipated, they’re keeping us distracted while the main guys escape.”

“Shepherd 1 to Shepherd 2. Do you need help?”

He hears Jaemin scoff on the line, in between the sound of punches and his dominator going off. “I think you’ll have your hands full. Come back for me later.”

A minute passed. Five minutes. Jeno turned to look at Jaebum, who returned him a concerned look. He patched a line to the comms. Nothing. 

“Sora?” He called.

There was only the sound of wind whipping the snow-dusted ground.

“Shit,” Jeno cursed, sucking in a sharp breath. He charged his dominator up on standby mode, rising from his hiding spot from the bushes. He was trailing behind Jaebum when he spotted the tell-tale laser sight on the back of Jaebum’s head.

He blinked, and Jaebum crumpled to the floor. The sound only reached him after.

He registered the metallic cold touch of a gun barrel to the back of his head.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” a rough voice didn’t come from behind him, but from around him, an omniscient voice that seemed to be transmitted from everywhere. Jeno remained still.

There was a shuffling of bushes, branches that caught the legs of the people walking through it. Jeno watched in mortification as from under the shadows emerged a group of androids, their faces life-like and almost human, and Jeno wouldn’t have known if it were not for the exposed wires and damaged limbs.

They parted to unveil the mastermind behind the whole plot.

He stepped into the light of the clearing, his hair moon white and smile sinister. He had his hands behind his back, stance regal like a pastor, and he casted Jeno a condescending look.

“Lee Jeno,” the man said in greeting, and chills ran up Jeno’s spine at the sound of his name leaving the man’s lips. It was foreign, and it left an impression so lasting Jeno felt he could taste the sting of it on his tongue.

“At last we meet,” he continued, sizing his opponent. “As much as you have been watching me, I too, have been watching you.” The man twisted to beckon at his android minions. “Bring them forward.”

He continued to stare hard-eyed at the man, trying to understand the peculiarity of his being. But he could only hold his composure for so long. The sound of marching tore his attention away. The sight of limp bodies bent his stomach in despair. _No_.

Youngmin-sunsengnim was at the top of the mound, mouth hanging open. For a moment he felt so selfish, because his grief was brief, because among the faces of the dead he searched for the one that mattered to him the most, and hoped and believed it would not be true.

His eyes darted from one face to the next. All familiar faces, and yet—

The androids came forward with another two bodies. This time, the two of them were walking, chains clinking like wind chimes in lonely wind. The sound of it rang clearly in the crisp night air.

The university student appeared first, hands bound and head bowed, his life seemingly knocked out of him even though he was unharmed.

Jeno held his breath, only sensing it escaping him when Jaemin stepped into the dim light. In the night, color faded into different gradations of grey, and his pastel blue hair took the light and returned frosted silver. Only the gash on his upper lip showed blood red.

When they stopped walking, the androids cuffed both hostages at their ankles.

Jeno waited, calculating his next plan of action. The only weapon in his vicinity was the gun pointed to the back of his head. The white haired man may also be armed, but his hands were occupied, gesticulating while he talked.

In one swift motion, he elbowed the man behind him, twisting to first grab the gun by the barrel, then to disarm him. He hurled him over, cracked his head on the frosted rim of a rock, and watched sparks sizzle from under the android frame. He pointed his dominator at the criminal.

_Lost connection. Please try again in a moment._

The light from his dominator glowed red in lock mode.

Jeno would have to stall for time while he waited for his dominator to regain connection to the grid. He maintained his hold over the man with the wicked white hair.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“My name is Choi Sunghoon,” he answered willingly.

The name rang a bell. Jeno was sure he’d seen it before in one of the reports.

“We have serious charges against you, Choi Sunghoon. By the authority of the Public Safety Bureau, I demand you to come with us!” Jeno shouted.

“That’s very convincing,” Choi Sunghoon said, clapping at Jeno’s delivery. “I know what you’re doing, stalling for time. Well then — let’s make our conversation interesting at the very least.” 

He paced around his two hostages. The university student cowered in fear, while Jaemin remained steely.

“The serious charges you mentioned — I know which ones: Lee Yoori… Jung Woo In... I was wondering when the MWPSB dogs would finally catch up to me. It took longer than I thought, so I made this last one easy.” He continued, lips curling into a sneer.

“You’ve got us here now. So what exactly do you want?” Jeno grit angrily. He trained his dominator onto Choi Sunghoon again.

_Connection lost. Restoration in progress._

“I’ll tell you what I want. I want a society in which people have the ability to act based on their own will. One’s education, career, marriage all involve Sibyl’s hand. Where is the beauty in a life without free will? I have merely enabled people to act on that which makes them human.”

“You know what you are. A criminal,” Jeno snapped.

“That’s cute. A criminal,” Choi Sunghoon rolled his eyes. “How do you even define crime to begin with? Does your dominator, and by extension the Sibyl System, define crime? So tell me what your gun says. Who am I?”

Jeno activated his dominator again, and by stroke of luck it caught onto the signal.

_Crime Coefficient is under 70. Not a target for enforcement. Trigger will be locked._

_What?_ He thought, for one second believing he was hallucinating. He ran another check.

_Crime Coefficient is under 50. Not a target for enforcement. Trigger will be locked._

“So, what am I?” Choi Sunghoon asked again, and Jeno didn’t know how to answer. “Can you see?”

He ambled over to the university student, pulling out a pistol from his coat pocket. 

“At long last, science has uncovered the secret of the human soul. Society has changed drastically since then, and now we leave it to Sibyl to decide our fate. So,” he tone shifted, directing himself back to the topic. “If you base all your decisions on Sibyl’s oracle without consulting your own will, are you truly human?”

Choi Sunghoon stepped closer, bringing the pistol to the student’s head.

“Since we’re here, I guess I’ll try testing you too. You see that gun next to you? You’re going to need it.”

Jeno looked down to his feet and spotted the pistol next to the android’s smashed head.

“What are you doing?” He asked, fingers tensing around his dominator.

“I am going to kill both of these men today,” he announced. “If you want to stop me, you’ll have to pick up that gun and shoot me. That useless scrap of metal won’t fire, even if you try.”

Jeno trained his dominator on Choi Sunghoon. He couldn’t believe his own eyes.

_Crime Coefficient is under 30. Not a target for enforcement. Trigger will be locked._

Choi Sunghoon began counting down and before he knew it, the student collapsed to the ground.

At that moment, Jeno’s limbs didn’t feel like his own. His mind didn’t feel like his own. And he was wandering in a lost field looking for a directive. He felt so powerless, and it manifested in the way his hand quivered. His hands had gone red at the knuckles, blooming bright against the backdrop of the snow.

Choi Sunghoon stepped towards Jaemin now, who watched him warily. Jeno knows the face that Jaemin puts on when he wants to convince others that he’s not afraid.

“I’m being serious here, don’t think I’m joking,” Choi Sunghoon said. He pushed Jaemin to his knees. “Pick up the gun and use it.”

_Crime Coefficient is under 20. Not a target for enforcement. Trigger will be locked._

He couldn’t do it. If Sibyl said that Choi Sunghoon was not a target for enforcement… but he saw what was happening with his own eyes. He felt it in the shortness of his breath. 

Shakily, he crouched down to the ground and groped for the pistol. 

“You’re taking too long,” Choi Sunghoon sighed. He dropped his pistol, opting to kick Jaemin in the back instead. 

Jeno heard the sound of Jaemin’s cry, muffled against the snow. 

“Your dominator cannot measure my sin. Only you can, by becoming a killer at your own will,” he spoke coldly. He placed an uncaring foot on Jaemin’s back, pressing down. He held up his pistol once more. “You MWPSB dogs are so easy to read.”

Jeno now recognized his terrible purpose. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for a moment like this. Fear gripped him like a noose around his neck, but he knew of worse things. A life without Jaemin wasn’t a life worth living at all. His new purpose seeded itself in the center of his consciousness, and he saw the path he needed to take to escape.

“How regrettable, Inspector Lee Jeno, you—” Choi Sunghoon stopped, interrupted by a bullet to his head. 

Moving on reflex, Jeno proceeded to take out the rest of the androids with his pistol. One by one they collapsed, and the forest was rife with gunfire until, finally, it settled into an eerie quiet. In his ears, he continued to hear the howling of the night.

When it was all over, he rushed to Jaemin, carefully turning his body over in order to not aggravate his injuries. He had passed out, but more importantly, he was breathing. His eyelashes were wet and matted, and Jeno held him, shoulders shaking as he cried.

* * *

Jeno opts to leave out some of the details as he’s conveying this to Jaemin, who watched him intently as he spoke. He was no longer a child that needed protection, but Jeno recognized the danger of knowing too much. So until Jaemin knows what he’s getting himself into, Jeno will keep it to himself.

He doesn’t describe to Jaemin the scene of the aftermath, the field of upturned bodies. He leaves out mentioning the frozen smile on Choi Sunghoon’s face, which he saw when he nudged the man’s stiffened body aside with his boot. There are other things beyond description — namely, how Choi Sunghoon had willfully decreased his crime coefficient while he murdered in cold blood.

The visceral image of that night has stuck with him ever since.

“Hey,” Jeno snaps out of it at the sound of Jaemin’s voice. Jaemin reaches out to touch Jeno’s hand tentatively and it’s warm.

They remain in ambivalent silence until Jeno speaks again.

“You don’t remember a single thing from that night?”

Jaemin shakes his head, “Not at all.” He scrunched his forehead, eyebrows furrowed, as if he were studying something invisible written on the table. 

“Does it still hurt? Your back?” Jeno asks.

Jaemin reaches to touch it subconsciously.

“Not so much. You know the routine — Can’t do stupid shit anymore, have to constantly watch my back like an old man,” Jaemin says. “Sometimes the phantom pain wakes me up at night, but then I just have to remind myself that the worst is over, and that the pain isn’t real.”

He pauses to glance at Jeno. “I’m sure you have your own demons that keep you up at night.”

Jeno snorts. “Yeah, of course. Everyone who works here does.” 

He meets the other’s eyes and they smile at the same time.

“Then what happened after?” Jaemin probes further.

“Obviously the Chief found out how I handled the situation. Four dead enforcers and an injured inspector — that was a good enough reason for my crime coefficient to spike. Killing a good civilian with an illegal weapon pretty much sealed the deal for me,” Jeno explains. There was no other reason that could convince Sibyl otherwise.

“But he wasn’t a good civilian,” Jaemin maintains.

“Well, in Sibyl’s eyes he was.”

* * *

Jaemin balls his hands into fists. Underneath his hands the table strains against his weight.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he says in disdain, but the anger only lasts for a moment, quickly replaced by a sort of helplessness. “You shouldn’t be here, _trapped,_ in this prison.”

“I tried to contact you when I received news that you’d come to after your surgery,” Jeno adds, body drifting closer to Jaemin. “They didn’t let me.”

Jaemin looks away under the weight of Jeno’s gaze, revealing the side of his face. He tries to hide his tearing eyes, but the congested snort through his nostrils gives him away. Jeno pushes up from his seat to get tissues from the kitchen and returns to Jaemin’s side with a handful of them. He squats to be able to see Jaemin’s face, hidden under his bangs.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Jaemin admits quietly, voice wavering on the exhale. 

He doesn’t dare open his eyes, knowing that Jeno would be right there when he opened them. He would always be there — he should have never doubted that.

Briefly, he considers the many ways their paths had diverged from a common point. In one parallel universe, they’d still be doing bike patrols through the Olympic Park. In another, they could be living as civilians, far removed from the chaos that plagued the Ministry of Welfare. But the world’s worth of _what ifs_ can’t change _what is_. And Jeno’s there now at his knees, his frame dominated by a degree of smallness in the low light of his room.

“I’m sorry,” Jeno says. 

Jaemin shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be. It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine.”

“I made the decision to do it,” Jeno insists, putting the tissues into Jaemin’s hand. “It was my choice,” he adds, as if it helps to change things, but Jaemin presses on:

“Why?”

And what Jaemin means is _why’d you do it for me?_

His body mirrors Jeno’s as he stands up straight now. His eyes meet Jeno’s eyes like he’s searching. Between them the air is so still that even the slightest movement could set his heart prickling like a nape when touched.

When Jeno smiles it is a rueful one — the kind, forgiving one he puts on when he needs to.

“Please don’t make me say it.”

“Jen,” Jaemin pleads, reaching for Jeno’s wrist. 

“You already know,” Jeno replies, though he makes no effort to shake off Jaemin’s bruisingly tight grasp. 

“No, I don’t,” Jaemin insists because he needs to hear it for it to be true. And even then, he’d probably still be unconvinced, because he never imagined it ending this way, and he’s afraid that he’s going to wake up at any moment and realize it had all been a beautiful dream.

His grip loosens, his hand hanging like a cuff around Jeno’s wrist.

“You really need me to spell it out?” Jeno asks.

“Yes, because I’m an idiot.” 

Jeno sighs.

“Because I love you,” he says. There’s no second guessing, no misinterpretation or trick of the light. The words ring clear and true.

“I always have,” he continues, a little exasperated. At himself or at Jaemin, he can’t really tell, but he gets cut off by Jaemin pulling him into a hug.

“Good,” Jaemin says, mumbling into Jeno’s shirt, relaxing into Jeno’s warmth when he returns the embrace a beat later.

“Good?” Jeno echoes, confused.

“Because I love you too.”

Jaemin feels the twitch of Jeno’s hand on his back. A pause. “You do?”

“Of course,” Jaemin says, lifting his head from Jeno’s shoulder. He looks him dead in the eye. He looks at him like he’s the only one in the world that matters. “Who else, other than you?”

Something in Jeno clicks then, and his expression changes into something sly. “ _You already knew_ ,” he says again upon realization, “And you made me say it.”

For the first time in a long while, a smile graces Jaemin’s lips easily. He breaks into a wolfish grin, his teeth bare and bright in the dark as he shirks away from Jeno’s hands, which were threatening revenge. 

“ _You fucking asshole_ ,” Jeno groans, all bark but no bite. 

He’s pulling Jaemin by the collar of his t-shirt — pulled him close enough to see his dilated pupils and parted lips — and then they’re kissing.

He surges forward to press his lips against Jaemin’s, and it feels glorious.

There’s too many things happening for Jaemin to process: First, the warmth of Jeno’s lips on his, warmth that spread across his cheeks and down his neck. Next, the fiery touch of Jeno’s fingertips coming around his waist to hold him by the small of his back, the heat near constant and spreading like a fan. And when Jeno gives his bottom lip a teasing nip, Jaemin can’t help but let out an embarrassing moan.

He jerks aparts, but just barely. The intermingled breath is so close he could almost swallow it.

Jeno cups a hand behind his head to reel him back in.

Everything that Jeno had been trying to convey — Jaemin now feels in the way Jeno presses against him. Jaemin’s hands trail up Jeno's muscular arms, up to his broad shoulders, the arch of his collarbone, finally setting at the underside of his angular jaw. He takes whatever Jeno is willing to give. In turn, he bares everything he’d been hiding.

He breaks the kiss just enough to look at Jeno’s face.

“I love you,” he says again to make sure Jeno hears. “I’m sorry,” he says again, “For everything.”

_For attempting to cut you out of my life. For realizing too late what I’d done._

“Jaem,” Jeno whispers, the gentle caress of his hand to cheek making a mess out of Jaemin. They could do this forever, Jaemin dares to imagine it. He could kiss Jeno raw until his lips glistened red like a maraschino cherry, and then some more.

“How long have you felt this way?” Jaemin asks.

Jeno hums in thought. “Since high school?”

“ _Shit_ ,” Jaemin curses, mentally counting the years. He squeezes his eyes shut and Jeno nudges him, wondering if he’d said something wrong.

“Please don’t tell me I have to go home and sleep alone tonight,” Jaemin says.

Jeno snorts. “Of course you can stay.”

He guides Jaemin back to his bed at the corner of the studio, weaving past the furniture. 

“It’s not much, but it’s cozy,” he says, climbing onto his full-sized bed. He pulls Jaemin on, and he settles in next to him, chest to chest. Jaemin throws a leg over his.

They kiss again, but this time it’s different. They take it slower — Jaemin takes the time to gently brush the hair out of his Jeno’s crescent eyes, leaving his fingers to rest on the side of his cheek. He holds him tenderly, gingerly, almost as if he was afraid he could break. His hand occasionally continues to tremble, still shaking away the disbelief. 

_He’s here_ , Jaemin marvels, ghosting a touch over Jeno’s skin. _He’s_ _mine_ , he almost cries, especially when Jeno kisses him again.

“We really should sleep,” Jeno says much later. Jaemin doesn’t even register how much time has passed. 

“Okay, okay,” Jaemin mutters, pulling away. He shifts to the other end of Jeno’s pillow, because Jeno only has one pillow, and pulls the blanket up to his chin.

He reaches to thread their fingers together.

He thinks about all the lost time, and how he’s going to make up for it. He thinks about the soft, steady exhale out of Jeno’s mouth. And then he’s thinking about nothing at all, drifting into dreamless sleep.

* * *

“Ack,” is the first thing Jaemin says when he wakes up in the morning to the sound of Jeno’s alarm. When he cracks open his eyes, he mumbles, sleep-addled: “Why’s it so dark in here?”

His movements stir Jeno awake, and groggily he turns over to switch on the bedside lamp.

“I don’t have windows,” he says, sounding unbothered. 

“God, doesn’t that bother you?” Jaemin asks, stretching his body against Jeno’s. Jeno is warm, so warm, and Jaemin decides he’s never going to sleep another way ever again. 

“Eh, you get used to it,” Jeno shrugs. “This was the only available room when I moved into the building.” He winds an arm around Jaemin’s waist, taking comfort in the way it fit against his palm.

“How’d you sleep?” He asks.

“Like a baby,” Jaemin grins, self-satisfied. His peace only lasts as long as Jeno’s next alarm.

“What time is it?” Jaemin whines.

Grumbling, Jeno turns over to check. “Oh, we have plenty of time. It’s thirty minutes to nine.”

“What!” Jaemin gasps, shooting up in bed. His expression quickly morphs into abject panic. “I’m going to be so late to work!” He stumbles out of Jeno’s bed to look for his car keys. 

“I can’t go to work wearing _this_ —” Jaemin points to his Ryan the Lion t-shirt, “Or _those_ —” he points to the vintage Adidas sliders at the door.

Jeno smirks, propping himself up on his elbows. “You could wear my clothes,” he offers, letting his thoughts wander. He entertains the brief vision of Jaemin in his shirt, and _just_ his shirt.

“You pervert,” Jaemin teases. “Then _everyone_ will know where I spent the night.”

“I think you’d like that,” Jeno counters smugly. For the first time in a while, Jaemin’s caught without a comeback. He opens his mouth, closes it, and nods. He jangles his car keys. “I’ve really gotta go now,” he announces, but remains rooted by the dining table, where his gaze remains transfixed on Jeno.

It doesn’t take an idiot to figure out what Jaemin wants. Jeno wiggles out of bed and walks over to him, giving him a light peck on his lips.

“Now go, or you’ll really be in trouble,” he teases.

* * *

After what was the longest week of his life, Sungchan finally gets twelve hours of sleep, falling into bed at a glorious 8 p.m. as soon as he arrives home. He wakes up to no new emails, no missed calls, and for a second wonders if he left his phone on airplane mode by accident.

When he strolls into the office at nine on the dot, Jeno’s the only one in. He’s sitting by the long paneled windows at the end of the room with a cup of coffee in his hand, mood chipper.

“You’re early,” he remarks casually, his voice travelling from his desk all the way to where Jeno was sitting.

“I’m well-rested,” Jeno replies. “Best I ever slept in my life.”

“Me too,” Sungchan agrees, setting his briefcase down on his desk. He’d finished yesterday’s incident report in record-breaking speed (by his own standards, of course), so all there is left to do is wrap up Kim Hyunjoon’s murder investigation. But now that the culprit is already in custody, there is little else for him to worry about.

Sometimes it surprises him how it’d only been two weeks since he started. In fact, it’s the exact last day of university for him, had he been in class. Sungchan sinks into his seat, taking in the long view of the office floor and how the room steadily fills with light. It had been a rough start, yes, but Sungchan could see now why some would like it. He could see why his father loved it. 

He sinks further into his chair and closes his eyes.

The rest of them slowly trickle in — Chenle first, then Ten and Johnny at the same time, holding a dish of brownies. The rich, sinful smell is enough to lure Jeno over from across the room.

“We had time last night,” Ten says graciously, placing the glass dish in the center of Sungchan’s desk. 

“Ten was just hungry,” Johnny kids, then adds, “Happy Graduation, Inspector Jung!”

They’re crowded around his desk when Jaemin rushes into the office all flustered. He nearly stumbles into the crowd of people surrounding the inspectors’ desks.

“Oop,” he yelps, right as he avoids colliding head-on with Jeno. He holds his position, as if teetering on the edge of a plank. Jeno’s arm catches him by the waist before he tips over. 

“Jaemin,” Sungchan greets, shifting back in his chair to get a glimpse of him. He now notices the... peculiar way Jaemin looked. He doesn’t know if he should comment, but Jeno beats him to it. 

“Wow, you look like shit,” Jeno says. Jeno points at the crinkled white button-top peeking from underneath his navy suit jacket. He then points at a spot on Jaemin’s face, “You forgot to blend your concealer too. Here, let me help.”

Sungchan watches in absolute mortification as Jeno’s brownie-stained fingertip makes contact with Jaemin’s face, and braces himself for the potential nuclear fallout. It could manifest in various ways: Jaemin blowing up, for one, or Jaemin descending into a sour mood for the rest of the day, but Jaemin manages to subvert his expectations. 

He stands still while Jeno fixes his makeup. He’s _smiling_ while Jeno wipes his greasy finger all across his cheek. A full night’s sleep, free brownies, and now this? What next — Jaemin professing his love for Jeno? Sungchan shakes some sense into his soul. He scrutinizes his brownie to check if it has something in it. 

“Thanks, Jen,” he says, mood infinitely brighter, oblivious to the raised eyebrows all around the room. 

Jaemin looks at Jeno endearingly. He also _giggles_. 

And, _oh_ , Sungchan definitely thinks he’s woken up in another dimension now.

* * *

After the mad scientist was arrested and identified as Im Hana, digging up her internet and server history was a piece of cake for Doyoung. He’s managed to piece the data points to form a coherent story, but there’s just one thing he can’t explain. 

“Displayed here is a chart of Ssambear’s CommuField guest activity. The top visitors over the past six months have had regular patterns of dropping by before and after Kim Hyunjoon’s death. Im Hana was one of those, as you can see from the line in red. Everything appears normal, up until the day after Kim Hyunjoon’s death. After that, the activity of her own avatar flat lines,” Doyoung explains to the group of them. 

“And that was when she took Ssambear’s place,” Jeno continues, studying the chart. “She was such a fan of Ssambear that she managed to replicate his mannerisms and way of talking, and it was so close to the original that she managed to go undetected. There was just one thing she miscalculated — Rainy Blue.”

“She was only able to gleam what was on the surface. But Kim Hyunjoon’s inner thoughts, his motivations, relationships — she couldn’t have known any of that,” Jaemin says haltingly, his eyes widening as his understanding grew.

“There’s just one thing that cannot be explained just yet,” Doyoung says.

Sungchan stands arms akimbo, finishing Doyoung’s thought in a sullen tone, “Why her crime coefficient’s so low.” 

He remembers her face through the viewfinder of his dominator and the surprise he felt when her crime coefficient barely broke past 200. Had she really killed Kim Hyunjoon, or attempted the signal scrambling feat in Club Cocoon, surely her crime coefficient would exceed 300. She had committed a crime, yes, but the severity of the crime was reflected in her cymatic scan. Numbers from Sibyl don’t lie.

“Has anyone spoken to her at the holding facility?” He asks.

“They tried to take her statement. Last I heard she kept her mouth shut the entire time,” Doyoung answers solemnly.

Sungchan shoots a knowing look across to Jaemin, knowing he’s got the same idea in mind.

“I think I know how we can get her to talk.”

* * *

Just as Sungchan expected, his good day stopped at the free brownies — everything had spiralled ever since. Bad news arrives from Doyoung, who had run up to the Division Three office immediately after he heard the news.

“She’s dead,” he heaves, panting against the door frame.

Jeno’s head snaps to attention, and he’s pushing up from his desk before he knows it. “What?”

“Our prisoner transport vehicle was en-route to HQ when it blew up on the First Ring Expressway.”

“Someone crashed into it?” Jaemin asks.

“No,” Doyoung replies. “It exploded spontaneously. It was planned.”

Sungchan nods solemnly, processing this information. He starts to gather his paperwork on his desk. “Sounds like we better get going then.”

“Nuh-uh,” Jaemin stops Sungchan just as he’s about to grab his CID jacket. He taps this monitor with the back of his nail, gesturing for Sungchan to take a look. “The case’s been reassigned to Division One.”

Sungchan makes no attempt to hide his disappointment. His shoulders sag and his lips curve into a frown. “You can’t be serious,” he laments. They were on the cusp of cracking the case. To be taken off it with no explanation whatsoever made no sense.

He seems to be the only one that has a problem with it though, he realizes that when his gaze sweeps across the room. He doesn’t miss the look of relief on some of his enforcers’ faces. 

“Take it easy,” Jaemin gives him a pat of the shoulder. “You’re two weeks in. There’ll be plenty of cases ahead of you. By the looks of it, this case might be more than we can handle.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sungchan took a slow, long breath and released it. The gears were still turning in his head, and even when he tried to pull the brakes it still spun, and spun.

* * *

“You seem to be taking things a little better than our other friend,” Jeno says in a low whisper, coming up from behind Jaemin, who was making his third cup of coffee at the kitchenette. His hand finds a way under the back of Jaemin’s suit jacket to gently squeeze him at the waist.

“Jeno!” Jaemin yelps ungracefully, spilling half a bag of sugar on the counter. He levels Jeno a flat look. “God, don’t do that.”

“You like it though,” Jeno retaliates, hand still warm on Jaemin’s waist.

Jaemin shys away from his touch now. “Be careful someone sees,” he admonishes, voice low.

“I bet you’d like that too.”

Jaemin finds himself at a loss for words. _Possibly_ , he thinks. _Definitely_ , he denies.

Quietly, he waits for his coffee to finish. He thinks about Sungchan’s grumpy face as he typed essays into his laptop. “I’m taking it _much_ better than Sungchan,” he concludes at the end of that mental vision, shaking the remainder of his sugar into his cup.

“I’d rather do an entire life’s worth of bike patrols than die on a case,” he says so casually plain it sounds sardonic. And it’s true, the risk wasn’t worth it. The days he used to gun for Division One were over, and he’d be more than content handling petty crimes in Division Three.

Jeno hums in understanding, voice teasing, “Be careful what you wish for, Jaem.”

* * *

As Jaemin had envisioned, the next few days pass uneventfully. To pass the empty blocks of time, the unit is assigned to a smattering of patrol work. On one day, they put on Komissa-nim avatars to patrol COEX Mall, where Jeno loses a game of rock, paper, scissors and ends up having to wear the female mascot costume. On another day, they’re deployed on standby outside the parliament building, where Jaemin takes on the responsibility as the car DJ, and Jeno and Chenle have no choice but to listen to his playlist. 

To his delight, this arrangement does wonders for his schedule, and it frees up important time for him to poke around the Ministry of Welfare portal.

“Time to pack your bags, my man,” he announces a few days later, throwing open Jeno’s doors yet again. He catches Jeno right as he’s dressing for work. He definitely does take the time to appreciate this, leering while Jeno pulls up his pants, but time is of the essence. As soon as Jeno buttons his pants, Jaemin pulls him out of his shoebox studio to the elevator lobby, and Jeno watches in confusion as the elevator rises to the twenty-seventh floor.

“Ta-da!” Jaemin proclaims dramatically when they’re standing outside a random door.

Jeno’s head tilts in confusion. It looks just like any other door, and he isn’t sure if he is supposed to notice something special about it.

“Go on, open it,” Jaemin prods him along. 

Jeno raises his eyebrows. “Who lives here?”

Jaemin eyes him with mirth. “You do. Now go on.”

The look of bewilderment doesn’t leave Jeno’s face even after Jaemin opens the door for him, because he’s seemed to have forgotten how to use his hands. Or his legs. Or his mouth. His lips part in amazement when the door opens up to reveal a beautiful loft apartment. One with large floor to ceiling windows that let in so much light it seemed to illuminate the biscuit-colored hardwood floor.

“This is… mine?” He asks in shock. The room is fitted with the barest of furniture, but it is complete. His eyes travel from one end to the other, following the stairs that led to the queen-sized bed on the upper loft. 

“Yup,” Jaemin replies contently with a pop on the _p_. “All yours.”

Jeno takes tentative steps towards the window, and it was like taking a long-awaited dip in a hot pool. The sunlight envelopes him in a warmth he doesn’t even realize he’d missed. He peers out of the window and feels like he’s standing on the edge of the world. It’s amazing.

He turns around to Jaemin, who’s been leaning against the island in the kitchen watching Jeno’s reaction carefully.

“How’d you do this?” Jeno questions.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jaemin waves. “I just checked the system and found out that this unit had been sitting empty for the past month or so. It worked out very nicely,” Jaemin answers, slipping his hands into his pockets. 

Jeno ambles over, caging Jaemin in between his arms as he rested his hands on the counter. He studies the full lines of Jaemin’s mouth, the lovely berry tint that brought all the color to his face.

“If it were that easy I would’ve done it myself,” Jeno says, closing his arms in so that he brackets Jaemin’s small waist.

“ _Fine_ ,” Jaemin admits under the pressure of Jeno’s knowing look. “I might have pulled some strings,” he says, omitting to mention how he’d cashed in on his I.O.U. with the Bureau Chief. And, oh, also ‘voluntarily’ signed up to help out with entry-level recruitment for the entire year. 

Jeno leans in close to bump his nose against Jaemin’s. “Thank you,” he whispers so closely that Jaemin feels the words on his lips.

“So, what do I get?” Jaemin says, pleasantly smug, lips curving into a bratty grin.

“Hmm?” Jeno chuckles. “You weren’t doing this out of the goodness of your heart?”

He doesn’t miss the way Jaemin licks his lips.

“I demand kisses every day for the rest of my life,” Jaemin says, face stern. It’s the least threatening face Jeno’s ever seen him put on. It’s the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals. Jaemin doesn’t even need to ask.

“For someone who loves playing bad cop, you sure are a terrible negotiator,” Jeno says, then closes the distance.

* * *

Sometimes, in the lulls between cases or when he’s got nothing better to do, Jaemin does log onto the system to check on the updates on MWPSB case 170, which had been renamed from 370. 

He’s just curious — nothing more to it. 

It’s evolved into a strange compulsion, in which he feels a pressing need to refresh the page, even though he knows it’ll look exactly the same. He does read the first case reports, which were submitted shortly after the case had been reassigned. 

_“In the CCTV footage of Im Hana exiting her holding cell, she struggled against the prison officer, claiming that ‘He’ would be waiting to kill her as soon as she stepped outside.”_

_“The explosion was powerful enough to leave limited to no traces of the truck after. There was, however, an intact engraving of the word “Truth” was left on the shell of the bomb, which we believe was left on purpose.”_

The reports in that case folder stop after that. Even though it’s been days. Even after weeks. 

Jaemin files the thought away, even though he knows he’ll eventually come back to it. 

* * *

“Is there anything you miss?” Jaemin asks him one night when they’re cuddling. Jeno’s got two pillows now, but Jaemin nevertheless forgoes it in favor of resting his head on Jeno’s shoulder.

Idly, Jeno cards a free hand through Jaemin’s hair, scratching lightly at the base of his scalp. Jaemin purrs in contentment. 

“You,” he says. It’s cheesy and he knows it, and consequently gets a jab at his waist as punishment. 

“I’m being serious,” Jaemin emphasizes.

“Well,” Jeno begins, closing his eyes to conjure a picture of what his life could have been like. It’s nothing grand or fancy — he leaves the lofty career aspirations aside. “I miss going outside whenever I feel like it. Going biking with you at the park. Dinner at a pojangmacha. Eating my mom’s seaweed soup.”

 _Mm_ , Jaemin mumbles into Jeno’s shirt sleepily, and Jeno doesn’t think much more of it, leaving the thought to remain, simply, as a thought. 

That is why he doesn’t realize he’s on a date when Jaemin takes him outside a few nights later, until Jaemin literally seats him down in the pojangmacha and says, “This is a date.”

“What,” Jeno blurts clumsily. He feels heat flush up his neck. 

“We’re on a date. _Daaaate_ ,” Jaemin prolongs for emphasis. “That’s what boyfriends do. Stupid cute shit like hold hands” — he makes a point to knot his fingers with Jeno’s under the table — “Get drunk” — he points to the alcohol menu — “Make out,” he ends, with a flirty wink. 

God. Jeno looks away, radiating secondhand embarrassment. He gives Jaemin’s hand a squeeze.

“So I’m thinking of getting seafood pancake and tteokbokki. Soju to share?” Jaemin rattles on, brimming with excitement.

Jeno clears his throat. “Aren’t you driving?”

“Hello, it’s 2056. My car drives itself.”

They order too much food, too much alcohol, and Jeno feels like he’s bursting at the seams. He’s so full of joy he doesn’t even know where to begin, but then he looks at Jaemin and remembers where it all began.

* * *

It doesn’t end there. And honestly, Jeno’s more than okay with that. 

Whenever their schedules allow for it, Jaemin sneaks him out for a breather. They go for evening strolls around Gangnam, stopping occasionally along the bridges to take in the beautiful sunset. They get drunk in a food tent and make out for an hour in the backseat of Jaemin’s car. Eventually, it gets to a point where Jeno has to ask:

“Are you sure this is allowed?”

Jaemin pulls away, catching his breath. He’s a solid weight on Jeno’s lap.

“You mean us?”

Jeno nods. Outside, a car speeds past, followed by the sound of wheels spitting gravel.

“There’s no precedent for it,” Jaemin replies, distracted. “But I don’t have a problem with it if you don’t.”

Jeno’s hands tighten around Jaemin’s thighs. “Of course I don’t,” he says. “Then what about this? Us sneaking out every night?”

“I have legitimate reasons why I need an enforcer to come outside with me for errands,” Jaemin states.

“Legitimate reasons, you say,” Jeno questions, looking down at the compromising position they’ve found themselves in, the hardness in Jaemin’s pants unmistakable. “And you submit these applications every day?”

Jaemin gulps, and Jeno watches the outline of his Adam's apple rise and fall. 

“I’m the Inspector here,” he asserts, sinking into him. His smile is luminous in the darkness.

He leans closer, dangerously close, to whisper to the underside of Jeno’s jaw.

“If you don’t tell, I won’t tell either.”

* * *

Jeno still wakes to nightmares in the middle of the night. In those dreams he sees the same upturned bodies, like schools of fish in a vast, vast ocean. He experiences, so realistically, the vacancy of loss. His heart is as big as it is empty, and it keeps him buoyant in this dreamscape. Now, he awakes to Jaemin’s raspy voice, reminding him of where and who he is.

By the half-light coming from in between the blinds, he makes out the silhouette of Jaemin shifting in bed, his hazy figure coming into clarity as he settles to face him. 

Jaemin wraps a hand around his to tether him to reality.

Sometimes Jeno thinks he doesn’t deserve him.

He feels the gentle rumblings of Jaemin’s chest as he whispers sweet nothings. His bangs are messy, falling beneath his brows. He recalls fondly when Jaemin had attempted to cut them in Jeno’s bathroom, though it ended up with a pair of discarded scissors and an hour wasted after Jeno had offhandedly remarked that he liked it when Jaemin kept them long.

He sweeps them aside to press a kiss to his forehead. _Thank you_.

Jaemin kisses him back.

Jeno now knows, intimately, the feel of Jaemin’s bare skin against his. How easily clothes can come off as it comes on. How Jaemin looks when Jeno’s shadow reigns over him, flush riding on his cheeks as he comes down from his high. 

He collapses over Jaemin’s warm body, pressing a slow trail of kisses up the side of his neck, registering the speed of Jaemin’s hummingbird pulse.

His body is sticky, his hair is now matted with sweat, but Jeno wouldn’t have it any other way.

Slowly, after weeks of denial, Jeno eventually allows himself to have this.

* * *

Of course, not all problems are resolved that easily.

* * *

On a different night, Jaemin parks his car outside of Jeno’s family home. 

They sit in silence. They don’t go knocking on the door. They just watch the silhouettes as they move behind the curtains, all the way until the lights go out.

* * *

“You know you can’t keep relying on those forever, right?” Jeno says when he sees Jaemin receives a package of eustress vitamins from the mail.

“I know,” Jaemin replies, stacking the bottles on the pantry shelf. “It’s just in case.”

“There are better ways to keep your hue under control,” Jeno argues. 

“I know,” Jaemin repeats, knowing that it’d be impossible to go back to the way he was when he’d first started, bright-eyed and believing.

* * *

“What are you reading?” Jeno asks, looking up from his book. Jaemin’s reposed on his bed, back against the headboard as he scrolls through his watch holo.

Jaemin’s eyebrows furrow further when he pauses on a picture. He expands the image to take a closer look. He lifts his gaze to make eye contact with Jeno.

“I think you should see this.”

Jeno puts his book down and joins him in bed, leaning over to see what Jaemin had been studying for the past ten minutes. It’s an image of a rusted metal shard, one that’d likely blown off from a homemade bomb. On it, someone had scored, in hangul, _truth_.

“This again?” Jeno asks, remembering when Jaemin had shown him the case reports from case 170.

“No, it’s different. These are new,” Jaemin says. He swipes left to show Jeno the next picture in the deck. “It’s connected. It’s larger than we think.”

Jeno’s memory flickers back to a cold winter night, to a man with hair as white as snow.

“How’d you get access to this?” Jeno asks, voice firm.

He catches Jaemin’s attempt to avert his questioning look. “Hey,” Jeno sounds again, now reaching over to turn the holo off. “I think that’s enough working for today.”

He tugs Jaemin towards him. Jaemin rolls comfortably on top of Jeno, chest to chest, elbows propping his torso up just enough to eye Jeno curiously. “What else do you suggest we do then?” He asks.

Jeno glances up to meet him with a smile. He yawns. “Kinda wanna nap, to be honest.”

“Mmm,” Jaemin whines. Not what he had in mind, but he relents easily. “Scooch over.”

* * *

When they rouse from sleep it is already late afternoon. Long bars of light paint the walls in a brazen, apricot shade. The roar of the city outside diminishes and dies, supplanted by the innocuous hum of the heater.

Jaemin awakes to a hand running down the incurvature of his spine, trailing down to settle at his waist. There, the hand paws coyly at the waistband, dipping underneath to thumb the crenulated imprint of the shorts on his skin. It feels absolutely divine.

“Baby,” he calls by accident, and quickly presses his lips together. It’s quiet momentarily, like time’s stood still, and perhaps Jeno just has a habit of touching him in his sleep, but then Jeno _groans_ , like he’s conflicted.

“You,” he grits, voice deep, “will be the death of me.”

They stay that way in comfortable silence, Jeno’s breath hot on the back of his neck. Jeno’s arm curls around him, and Jaemin plays with his hands lazily. He runs his fingers along Jeno’s callused skin again, noticing the imperceptible quiver when skin meets skin. Small movements that could draw a grand sound from a guitar. He closes his eyes and thinks of those long, deft fingers fanned across the exposed plane of his stomach, wound around his biceps, maybe wrapped around his—

He swallows hard.

“Mmm,” Jeno mumbles sleepily, nosing into Jaemin’s hair. “You’re so warm.”

He returns a low chuckle, wiggling to interlace his hand with Jeno’s.

It fits perfectly. He rubs the inside of Jeno’s thumb languidly, then, all of a sudden, notices how pale his skin had become.

“Your tan line,” he remarks. “It’s gone.”

“Haven’t gone biking in a while,” he replies. It’s been more than a year.

Reminded of his brilliance, Jaemin perks up. He rolls over onto Jeno, a suspiciously bright smile hanging on his lips.

“Let’s go now.”

* * *

Jeno marvels at the feel of bike handles under his palms. It’s _his_ bike too, the one he owned before he was sent into isolation. 

“How’d you get this?” He asks when they’re in Jaemin’s apartment garage, and Jaemin’s unearthed his old racing bike from storage. There’s not a single speck of dust on it, so it must have been cleaned, but Jeno knows the bike is his from the faded paint and scratch on the leather seat.

“I shall not reveal my methods,” Jaemin says. Obviously, he’d needed to pick the bike up from Jeno’s family home. They had not tossed it, so that was a plus, but the emotional labor he needed to undergo to wrangle the bike from Jeno’s sister’s grip was not worth mentioning now.

“Hm, okay,” Jeno accepts, deciding not to press further.

They arrive at the Olympic Park right at sunset. Weeks had passed since Jaemin’s return to the CID. Now, they were right on the border of spring. Small, red cowslips had started sprouting by the shrubs, dotting the field like matchsticks to be lighted by the fiery sun. 

“We’re actually on a bike patrol now — that was the excuse I used — so if you do see anything suspicious,” Jaemin warns, before getting interrupted by Jeno’s knowing look.

“Very funny, Jaem,” Jeno nods, breaking away from Jaemin to speed ahead. He breaks into the widest grin, even as the cold air slaps against his face.

“I’m not kidding!” Jaemin shouts at the top of his lungs, leaning onto his foot to steady his balance off the bike. Jeno’s gone so far ahead that Jaemin knows for sure he can’t hear him, but then again, he doesn’t need to. He already knows.

He watches Jeno from the back as he rides into the sunset. The distance between them grows, and he’s shrinking so quickly that he looks as still and small as a spinning top, hovering like a constant.

Jaemin lets out a huff, shaking his head in amusement. 

He mounts his bike, pushing off without a second thought to chase after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♡ obligatory link to the [psycho pass ending theme](https://youtu.be/sF0QLtk3YH0), but if i had to pick an ending theme that fits this fic, it’ll be [this](https://youtu.be/_O_qpOFJ7eo) !!   
>  ♡ thank you thank you to everyone who cheered me on when i needed it, be it on twitter or through kudos/comments (´｡• ω •｡`) ♡ it really made a difference for me! this is the longest thing i’ve ever written and it was a labor of love. finally i've yeeted this into the internet lol   
>  ♡ [extended author's note](https://moonseul.dreamwidth.org/1961.html)   
>  ♡ this fic is retweetable [here](https://twitter.com/refois/status/1357856879787921409?s=20)! feel free to talk to me on twitter too!   
>  [twt](https://twitter.com/refois) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/refois)

**Author's Note:**

> ♡ title from niki's [la la lost you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErmgY5GX_wI&ab_channel=88rising), because we now know jaemin is a niki stan


End file.
